Is the USA headed in the wrong direction?
A good article from Slate about the wine popularity in the US, and how it has contributed to stagnation in beer sales. Reading it has inspired me to write a long, rambling, nearly incoherent blog post.
Wine’s position in the middle class household has changed dramatically over the past decade or more. While beer, for most people, remains the working man’s drink, wine represents something more civilized, more relaxing, and I would argue, LESS AMERICAN.
As the artilce points out, every jackass is a connoisseur in something (a self proclaimed “expert” on something, be it wine, container gardening, coffee, 1982 World Fair memorabilia, torrenting movies, Egyptian cooking, or whatever it is that you know more about than all your friends and spend a few hours a week googleing). This “I can be the best at something” attitude combined with the rise of the internet has certainly helped wine sales. What could be cooler than being the best wine-food matcher in your friend group?
This article does briefly address something that is going on in the beer world that could change everything. Craft brew. As a member of a beer club, a person who regularly seeks out new beer, and a homebrewer, I am surely speaking from a bias point of view. However, it looks to me like beer is evolving in a way that will give wine a run for it’s money in the image race. Sure, beer is a long way from loosing it’s fratboy, construction worker image, but it has already started to spring a dual-image in many minds. The fancy wine stores now have a huge variety of expensive craft brews, both domestic and imports. Every $25-$35 entree restaurant I’ve crashed in the last few years not only has an extensive wine list, but also a few draft local or craft brews and a Belgium or some other import available in bottles. And it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a bar that ONLY had Anheuser-Bush products, which despite the expensive horses, remain the king of working-class beers. The beer appreciation movement is just getting started in the US. Even though wine and martini companies now advertise during football games, hip trends like the buy-local, buy-fresh movements are helping local breweries like never before.
It also appears that the internet world is much more interested in Beer than in Wine. A quick digg search for BEER results in 41 articles with over 1000 diggs, while WINE only brings in 11 (most of which are about a software project called “wine” instead of fermented grapes).
Anyway, I’m happy to see wine making it’s place on the American table. When it comes down to it, it does not need to replace beer, however. There’s plenty of days in the week to enjoy both.
beer wine