Issue #1: The Accessibility of Wine, pt. 2

Big Drinks is a bi-weekly newsletter about the beverages we drink, where they come from, and how we enjoy them. Each issue hopes to approach a topic and explore it from a new angle with help from experts. Subscribe to get each new issue directly to your inbox.

This is the second part of a two-part issue: go back and read part one to keep from getting lost.

Part II:

Natural wine has started to become a buzzworthy phrase, the way craft beer has. But as craft beer has started a war with corporate conglomerate breweries, natural wine feels different. Most natural wine distributors, importers, retailers, and wine bars understand along with winemakers and producers that the conventional wine market is undoubtedly so much larger and diverse that it would be nearly impossible to view massive California estates as direct competition. While craft beer might represent a price jump along with its quality from mass-produced lagers, there tends to be a bigger price differential between readily available grocery store wine and smaller natural wine producers.

That’s not necessarily the goal, however. I reached out to Ann Marie Meiers, a Chicago-based wine professional, to get more perspective:

“Oh man I'm definitely showing my colors here, but I personally see no problem with making good wines affordable - and thereby accessible - to more people. Free wine for everybody! It's furthermore worth mentioning that many of the producers we like to work with the most also want as many people as possible to experience and enjoy their wines, so the goal of keeping prices as low as possible definitely extends all the way back to the winemakers.”

Ann Marie has worked for distributors, wine bars, and wine shops, so her experience in helping customers find a wine that fits their taste preferences and budget isn’t anything new. Part of that process is understanding where customers are coming from, and knowing how to navigate around phrases like “natural wine.”

“We often have this funny interaction at the shop where people call in or walk up to the door asking if we have natural wine and we get to tell them that it's all we have,” Ann Marie explains, and she’s also noticed the prevalence of “Natural Wine” being used as a buzzword phrase the same as Craft Beer.

“I think one of our most important jobs as professionals in the natural wine community is to keep a conversation alive that characterizes this really special craft beyond it's marketability (or something) and emphasizes the things that excite us about it; namely the people we love who make it and the unique places it comes from, and how those elements continue to evolve independent of the buzzwords and what's fashionable to drink or buy or act like you enjoy or whatever.”

There’s a lot in these ideas that relates back to specialty coffee. Specialty coffee is mostly in competition with itself, but, is slowly chipping away at the commercial coffee market share year by year. A major difference, however, is perspective on price. While most specialty coffee roasters are continuously having to push to raise prices in order to create a more sustainable business chain from the farmer all the way to the roaster, the idea that winemakers are trying to keep prices low speaks more to the margins winemakers are able to see from what they produce. A prevalent thought in specialty coffee is that lower prices might create a perspective that undervalues the work that goes into coffee at the farm, but that thought maybe doesn’t carry over as much in wine:

“I really think that as long as we're heavily committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and appreciation, the risk of undervaluing people and their craft doesn't really exist.”

And that’s an interesting idea to work through for people who are used to the struggle of demonstrating value in specialty coffee: if anything, wine has traditionally enjoyed a position of value speaking directly to itself: most people who buy a $40 bottle know there’s an inherent value, and most people who pick up a $3 bottle of wine also have an understanding of what they’re getting.

The concept of quality is more tied to preference in the value chain for wine or beer than it is for coffee: namely, a person picking up a 30 rack of High Life and a few bottles of Three Buck Chuck usually understands that they’re making a choice on specific value proposition: their flavor preferences are likely lining up with their budget, and while they might understand that a more expensive beer or wine is “higher quality,” it doesn’t mean it meets their flavor preferences.

Coffee can be a more difficult value proposition: as something generally consumed everyday, sometimes in larger quantities, there can be a bigger disconnect between the idea of price, quantity, and quality. Every year seems to see the recycling of of articles that look for “the best cheap grocery store coffee” in magazines, and while those same sorts of articles might show up for beer or wine, there’s a tacit understanding that with beer or wine you’re making a sacrifice for quality when choosing the cheaper option. For coffee, there tends to be an angle that suggests that specialty coffee roasters are ripping off the customer.

A cheap bottle of wine is also less of a commitment. The list of ingredients allowed to be added to wine is pretty staggering. While something like chitan-glucan might have antibacterial qualities and, as a preservative, keep your wine tasting more like it did the day you opened the bottle, most people would likely not too excited to consume something named “chitan-glucan.”

Accessibility doesn’t always just mean price. Being able to find and purchase what you’re looking for relies on having a wine store that meets your needs, and even then there’s a barrier of selecting a bottle off of the shelf. With a higher price point than what someone new to natural wine might be used to, picking out something new or exciting from the shop can be difficult:

“I feel a little more comfortable saying that I'd personally err towards wines that are heretofore unknown to somebody than something that I would perceive to be outside of their comfort zone. If someone says they want what's werid/funky/fucked up, whatever, sure, I'll steer them toward a more challenging wine — although now that I'm thinking about it, I think the term "challenging" can also mean so many different things in different contexts for all sorts of wine drinkers. In all truthfulnes I'm not going to very enthusiastically sell someone on a wine that I don't personally really enjoy unless they're specifically saying something that would make me think they'd love it, because I'm an incredible salesperson. I tend to think that venturing toward more challenging territory is typically reserved for building on an extant relationship with regulars who come to trust that you have their enjoyment and comfort in mind.”

That process can be interesting, too, depending on what people are asking for. With wine, you might have someone looking for a flavor profile, grape variety, a region, or even a specific producer.

“I think that despite the increasing popularity of natural wine as a phrase, it's still a bit challenging as a concept, so interested parties do tend to gravitate toward whatever singular elements have stood out in their experiences more. I think those types of characteristics are more or less evenly distributed across profile qualities/winemakers/grapes/regions.”

These types of experiences can be a wide range: maybe a friend recommended Pinot Noir as a variety someone would enjoy, or perhaps someone really loved a wine from Jura in France they had at a dinner. Those pieces of information might be really hard to translate for someone who is new to buying wine: there are plenty of cheap to expensive and crappy to amazing wines that are Pinot Noir or from Jura.

What this really means is that wine consumers need to rely on recommendations more than ever. And price can still be a barrier. Diversey Wine, in Chicago, carries bottles that range from $17 up to $120. This brings the average price per bottle closer to $30, but at the end of the day, the most requested price range at this shop is $20-$25. With a good recommendation at a reputable retailer, it feels like high quality natural wine can be more accessible than trying to navigate the price game at a conventional wine store. A legacy vineyard might charge $70 a bottle for their conventional wine, and while the quality might be there, it’s less likely that a newer wine drinker will be able to match flavor profile to price. A $20 bottle with a recommendation might just hit that sweet spot.

That all even relies on whether or not natural wine is easily found in your town. It’s difficult to get a recommendation at the natural wine shop if there is no natural wine shop. While some bigger warehouse style liquor stores have expanded their selection, demand and distribution are still nowhere near the network that craft beer quickly established in the last twenty years. While the Raisin app might help find where the natural wine stores are in the US, your options still might be limited if you live in, say, St. Louis.

Even then, a bottle of wine is still a commitment, and information about the production of a wine (like, say, aspects of their winemaking process, soil type, elevation, etc.) doesn’t necessarily help a customer understand value. Or maybe value is too hard to quantify:

“For me, certainly, those details help to illustrate what makes a wine, or an operation, or the person in charge of it, so special; but I'm grappling again with the question of value. I guess it would be naive to imagine that what I'm calling special characteristics don't translate to some purveyors as dollar signs, but I do think also that price points in general are a presently necessary evil that everybody has to contend with; from making buying decisions in a business to those casual consumers make, and again this is possibly not a fully informed notion, but I think that it's ultimately up to an individual (or the individuals involved in some transaction) to assign or observe or agree upon value.”

And therein lies the rub — unique and special wines have never been more accessible to customers both in availability and in price, but it still has to connect to the customer somehow for them to find something they’re looking for. 

At the end of the day, wine is something meant to be enjoyed, and if selecting a bottle is a stressful event, that enjoyment is likely to be tainted. The book Getting To Yes is a classic business world negotiation bible. The four steps of negotiation, as outlined in the book, are as follows:

It’s a great primer on what entering into a negotiation can feel like, and a wonderful tool understanding how a deal is made. In all honesty, you can skip the book and just read the summary linked above to get the gist, and the main thing to focus on is the idea of mutual gain.

Buying wine at a big wine retailer can sometimes feel like entering a negotiation trying to buy a car. You know the person is trying to sell to you, and you know the thing you’re after is likely more expensive than you want it to be. It’s not rare for someone to walk away with a newer Honda CR-V and think jeez that monthly payment is about $50 more than I expected it to be, and it’s a similar feeling for most people cradling a $35 bottle of wine from a place they’ve never heard of and a variety they’ve never heard of.

That feeling is pretty raw: I can remember walking away from a salary negotiation once knowing I’d agreed to something that made me feel under appreciated and left a bad taste in my mouth. That was the moment that my brother brought up some of the ideas he read in Getting To Yes: it’s less about what you think you someone in your position should be paid at other companies and more about whether or not that figure is something that feels good to you.

Similarly, if you know that a $30 bottle of wine that you should finish in one night is going to make you frown thinking about the price point with every sip, it’s unlikely that any amount of sales talk from the wine clerk at a liquor warehouse is going make you feel better about it.

Knowing your price range and articulating that clearly to a natural wine pro who wants you to enjoy what you’re drinking?

Now that’s a recipe for success (and, also, a recipe that doesn’t include polyvinyl-pyrrolidone polymer).

Thanks to Ann Marie Meiers, whose answers were the backbone of this issue of Big Drinks. Ann Marie has worked with mostly natural wine, mostly in Chicago, for a pretty long time. She likes most people and everybody's pets but is extremely discerning regarding cheesburgers. Additional information and help for this issue of Big Drinks comes from DJ Piazza.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.