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The Miami Herald
June 27, 2003
New Generation Finds Its Way to Wine Drinking
By Daniel Chang
(Copyright (c) 2003, The Miami Herald.)
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Ernie Varela has been put on the spot. The 35-year-old financial consultant is trying to explain his generation’s reluctance to put down the beer and spirits and pick up a glass of wine. Sitting among friends in the cavern-like Orchid Lounge of the Mayfair House Hotel in Coconut Grove, Varela pauses to ponder. A glass of red wine sits before him. “People think wine is for snobs,” he finally says, “because it’s been institutionalized as something people with money do. . . . It’s got its own vocabulary that’s intimidating. . . . A lot of the best wines come from France or Spain, so people think it’s foreign.” Sensing an opportunity to support her companion, Carla Leme, 26, posits that learning to enjoy wine is like learning to appreciate art or fine food. “It’s like caviar,” Varela agrees. “Not everybody likes beluga.” “Once you acquire a little bit of a taste,” Leme adds, “then you get a curiosity.” Still, Leme concedes that she doesn’t always catch the nuances of wine appreciation. For example, she says, “I have yet to smell leather,” a quality oenophiles detect in some red wines. For young adults weaned on Budweiser and booze filched from their parents’ liquor cabinets, wine can be an acquired taste. There’s a culture, an etiquette, an aura, even. And to the uninitiated, it can be daunting to encounter people who sniff their wine and blather on about “vintage” and “bouquet.” All one really needs to appreciate wine is the right attitude and a healthy thirst, says Mike Bittel, co-owner of Sunset Corners Fine Wines & Spirits and one of South Florida’s most learned wine aficionados. “At the end of the day,” Bittel says, “the way anyone learns about wine or becomes comfortable with wine is by pulling corks.” Still, Bittel and others say, an elitist image persists. Price is a common obstacle for young adults, says Barry Alberts, who hosts the Berries to Wine tastings each Friday night at the Mayfair House. “The majority of wine drinkers are 40 and higher and there’s a reason for that,” Alberts says. “People starting their careers don’t have the disposable income to spend $30 to $40 on a bottle of wine.” MOM AND DAD’S DRINK “Another stereotype,” says Bittel, who has been selling wine here since 1975, “is that wine, among young people, is perceived as something that their parents do as opposed to what they do.” It’s not that young adults aren’t interested, says Darryl Roberts, editor and publisher of Wine X magazine, a glossy targeted at Generation X. “It’s that wine isn’t interested in them.” “If you look at where the industry advertises and where it promotes and who it promotes to,” Roberts says, “it’s all in wine trade magazines, which are for people who are already the core consumers and those people are all in their 40s, 50s and 60s.” Which explains why Wine X runs reviews with a decidedly Gen-X tilt, describing one zinfandel in its latest issue as “Lickin’ chocolate off Tori Amos’ lips—medium body, red, spicy and jammin’.” Says Roberts, who is 40 but whose editorial staff ranges in age from 25 to 31: “The vast majority of people who drink wine don’t taste all the fruits and vegetables in the wine . . . writing stuff like that is like writing in Arabic.” “A lot of people know who Tori Amos is, as opposed to tropical fruit or butter in a chardonnay.” Wine X may be on to something with its hip approach, says Chip Cassidy, wine buyer for Crown Wine & Spirits. “I think we’re going to see a surge from the people that are 25 and younger,” says Cassidy, who also teaches wine courses at Florida International University. “I just see a lot more of them in the store and they’re buying more wine.” There’s plenty of room for growth. Of the 147 million Americans between the ages of 21 and 60, only 16.2 million—11 percent—drink wine at least once a week, according to the Wine Institute, an industry research firm. The Adams Wine Handbook, an industry guide, estimates that about 27 percent of U.S. wine drinkers are between the ages of 21 and 34. One of them is Sandra Ochoa, 22, who signed up for Cassidy’s FIU course and developed more than an academic interest in wine. “It has a lot of history involved with it, a lot of geography, a lot of culture,’"she says. “Just because it’s such a universal drink, everybody can relate to it.” Rather than judge her a snob, Ochoa’s friends have embraced the “yummy fruit juice,” she says. “Before we used to drink more hard liquor and recently I’ve noticed that there has been more wine involved in social events.” BREAKING RULES This sort of peer-to-peer introduction is the best way for young adults to overcome the layers of intimidating “rules” imposed by the old guard of viniculture, says Roberts, the magazine editor. “A lot of those layers are layers of ‘You have to drink it this way,’ ‘You have to do this,’ ‘God forbid you put ice cubes in your wine,’ ‘Don’t do this. Don’t do that,’” he says. “I think we’ve got to remove those. If they want to put a red in the refrigerator, shake their hand.” But Johnny Regan sees an upside to wine’s lofty image. “People think I’m European when I drink wine,” the 38-year-old Miami native explained at a Mayfair House tasting. “And the girls assume a whole lot more because all the other guys are walking around with Budweiser.” So much for the snob factor. |
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