Wine lovers used to be a stuffy lot. In the last generation American wine drinkers were pretty much restricted to well-established urban areas like New York City, Chicago and San Francisco. Wine was almost unheard of in most of the American south and midwest as well as throughout most of Canada. Those who loved it knew the handful of French producers whose wines were most likely to be available in American markets. Italian and German wines were rarely found outside of the big city restaurants.
They were considered wine snobs because of the necessary knowledge required for proper food pairings—knowledge not shared by the population at large. They used a special vocabulary to describe the properties of wine; a vocabulary understood largely by other wine lovers but not by the general public whose alcoholic beverage preferences were more likely to be beer and spirits. And nobody talked much about the fine points of beer. Some even drank it straight from the can (perish the thought!).
The older generation has become even more sophisticated as wine drinking has become more mainstream and its production has expanded to all 50 states and more than half of the Canadian provinces. And with the price of a bottle of decent wine approaching that of soda pop, a new generation of younger people is discovering that even cheap wine provides a better food complement than Coca-Cola, plus a welcome buzz. But today’s 20 to 30-year-olds have expressed little interest in the established wine traditions of their elders.
The Younger Generation
These young people, often called “millenials,” grew up in a fast-paced culture of rock-’n-roll, rapid-fire TV and video imagery. They’re more at home on a roller coaster than playing chess. They read easy fiction, not the classics. And when it comes to wine, they prefer screw caps and want wines that don’t require a lot of attention—precisely the kind of wine that is currently dominating New World markets. That is, high in alcohol and bursting with fruit flavor. They happily buy Red Bicylette, Gnarly Head, or Fat Bastard without the slightest knowledge of its varietal composition. Why care? It just needs to taste good.
The last thing to interest the millenials would be the memorization of the Première Grand Crus of Bordeaux or the Burgundian village names. They need not know varietal names, much less their pronunciation, save maybe Cab and Chard. Even a majority of TV celebrity chefs has failed to learn the proper pronunciation of common varietal names such as Sauvignon. (The same can be said of Italian cheeses such as mascarpone.) If today’s food professionals won’t make the effort to learn basic wine terms, how can we expect a younger generation to make the effort.
Of course it’s not the pronunciation of wine terms that really matters. It’s that words are keys to ideas. They are portals to an aggregate of useful knowledge that can lead to heightened enjoyment. One need not understand the chemistry of wine, but if you know the term M-L (malolactic fermentation) and its effect on wine, you will better be able to appreciate some of the elements that make up a wine’s character. You might even be inclined to seek out wines that exhibit more or less of the products of M-L.
Newer Trends in Wine Presentation
Although wine consumption in American society has now surpassed beer and spirits, the millenials aren’t nearly as likely to attempt food and wine pairings. They are more likely to set out a buffet of assorted foods and offer a selection of wines for their guests to choose from. No need to study whether a given dish would best be paired with a Viognier or a Chardonnay. Just put them both out and let everyone decide what they like. The concept of a food and wine marriage rarely occurs to them and if it happens, it’s probably completely accidental.
So the age-old tradition of serving food in courses, each matched with a specific wine, may become an oddity of the older generation. That is, until the millenials discover what they have been missing.
