Wine, beer or cocktails? Depends on the HEAT!

                                 

  

 

Wine consumption is down in the United States. Millennials and GenZ’ers have switched to cocktails and beer, and the marketplace has happily catered to their tastes. Media sources report that those 60 and under are less interested in buying wine and have a lower share of consumption than a decade ago. 

 

How did this come about?

 

Recently I stumbled onto a possible scientific explanation when I dined at one of San Francisco’s hippest and most expensive restaurants. I came armed with a fabulous Russian River Pinot Noir. We sampled the bottle, a big Burgundian-style Pinot with a long finish. Scrumptious. Then the food started arriving.  And it was delicious beyond belief. But every course was fused with either Asian or Mexican flavors, each dish with serious heat from pickled hot peppers of one variety or another. The wine was a total flop. The Capsicum dancing over my tongue overpowered the wine. Beer or cocktails would have paired much better.

 

So that’s the reason! And it makes perfect sense. Fine wines pair better with the subtle flavors of French or Italian food. Wine has never been a big thing in the Middle East, India, Asia or Mexico. And now all cuisine is fusion. 

 

And there might be another reason: A physiology professor in graduate school once announced to our class that he’d lived in Indonesia for a few years and it took him six months after returning to North America to get his taste buds back. Perhaps that’s also what we’re talking about: hot peppers temporarily knock out the nerves of our taste buds so the nuanced flavors of wine are lost. Apropos to that, Capsicum in creams applied to the skin effectively reduces pain and itch by exhausting the nerve endings.

 

French and Italian wines rightfully boast a thousand-year reputation, but here in California, upper echelon food trends with international spice and heat seem to have won out. We old geezers just didn’t get on the Sriracha bandwagon to the degree millennials and GenZ’ers did. 

 

Wine makers are busy weighing how they can appeal to a new generation of consumers.

Let’s hope ‘bitter’ is not their solution, as it was for coffee and beer in the younger set. While they are figuring it out, as a boomer, maybe I can hope to see a reduction in wine prices.

 

 (https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/wine-report)