A brief rumination inspired by the Come Over October movement.
I was very fortunate to be appointed to an endowed university chair about 20 years ago, which afforded me great freedom in what I could teach, so long as the classes contributed to the college education goals. My first new class was called “The Idea of Wine” and it quickly became the school’s most popular course, with a waiting list longer than the class list itself, even though the students knew it wasn’t a wine-tasting course and certainly not a wine-drinking course.
That’s the Idea!
Why did I call the course “The Idea of Wine”? Because ideas are important and how we think about things affects how we act. Many people seem to think about wine in terms of its alcoholic content and it is true that alcohol is critical to wine production. Wine isn’t just grape juice with alcohol added. The process of fermentation transforms the grape juice into a very different product. That’s why non-alcoholic wines must first be fermented and then the alcohol removed. You can’t avoid that alcohol step if you want to have wine.
So alcohol is part of wine, but if your idea of wine is alcohol, then it distorts the situation. I noticed this when I wrote a column a few weeks ago questioning whether wine is a good value in today’s marketplace. A couple of readers wrote to me suggesting that I had missed the obvious point. If you think of wine as alcohol, then it can be an excellent value, with a cost per unit of alcohol lower than beer or spirits for inexpensive commercial wines. OK, that’s probably true. Many people probably think of wine as just cheap alcohol, and they are entitled to their opinion, but that’s not the way I see it.
Prohibition’s Long Shadow
You can see where thinking about wine as just an alcohol delivery system can lead if you look at the U.S. experience with Prohibition. Beverage alcohol in general was prohibited during the Great Experiment in sobriety (although illegal booze was available, of course). But one loophole in the law allowed for home production of up to 200 gallons of wine per year for “non-alcoholic” family use.
Home-made wine, therefore, became a ready source of alcohol and, it must be said, alcoholic content was often all it had in common with quality pre-Prohibition wine since it was produced by amateur vintners in make-shift facilities with grapes that often traveled long distances in trucks and rail cars before processing. The idea of wine for most people was pretty sorry indeed.
Wine changed when Prohibition was repealed, but the idea of wine as alcohol didn’t suddenly disappear. Alcoholic content was still very important (sales of cheap fortified wines soared). State-controlled and sometimes state-operated distribution systems treated wine as a dangerous substance. It has taken almost 100 years to change the idea of wine in America and now we confront the possibility that the pendulum has started swinging back again.
The Hunt for Grape October
The idea of wine as alcohol has gained primacy in recent years. It may be a bad idea whose time has come, as they say, but it behooves those of us who love wine to put forward altertnative visions.
And so I am glad that we are celebrating Come Over October (COO) this year because it is built on a bigger idea of wine. The idea of COO isn’t about what wine is or what it’s made of or what ten aromas and flavors you should try to pick out. The idea of COO is to focus on what wine does (bring us together) and how wine makes us feel when we share it with old friends and new ones, too.
Ideas are important. John Maynard Keynes wrote that ideas are powerful for good or evil. If alcohol is a dangerously bad idea of wine then COO is a dangerously good idea, don’t you think?
Like your recent musings about NA wine, I had a similar experience. I just haven’t found one I liked and the overall impression is so bad, I don’t see a reason to try. I do find I prefer slightly lower alcohol European wines over the 14+% California wines. I also prefer wines that are made in the vineyard and not tinkered with in a lab to “match the flavor profile”.
One of the major issues with the wine industry is the conglomeration of it. As the big three take over more and more of the industry, they can’t help but homogenize the product. Good bad or sideways, wine isn’t always about the perfect flavor, it is about the creation and the experience and how we share it. It’s why we buy some pretty bad wines from small vintners after a great experience. It could be the friends that are with us or the winery itself, but the experience changes the impression.
I think COO is a great idea because our modern on the move lifestyle and culture has nearly eliminated family and community as our parents and grandparents knew it. Wine might just be the last thread of hope for any kind of community in our crazy modern world. I don’t think many people open an entire bottle to drink alone. Wine is a community drink, and while I enjoy my freedom of individualism, I learn more about others when we share a common connection. A good bottle of wine might just be the perfect connector for COO.
I agree with your basic premise that wine is and should be thought of as more than an alcohol delivery medium. But in your last post, I commented that alcohol is definitely part of my consumption of wine. One economic way to view the issue from the consumers’ perspective is if you like the effect that (moderate) consumption of alcohol brings to your life, wine is one option, but there are many (beer, spirits, hard seltzer, cider, etc.) and those other options seem to be winning more consumers than wine. I feel fortunate that wine is a vital part of my social circle, and though I like the concept of COO, my wife and I do CO every month!
As you should. I wish that the current campaign wasn’t focused on a single month, too.
Well said and timely. My idea of wine is that it is a food, part of a meal, and that is where the health benefits lie. There is too much emphasis lately on alcohol without context.