Heads across the globe turned. Two Oregon wineries sat up and acted.

On January 18, Sokol Blosser Winery in Dundee released its 2023 Estate Rosé of Pinot Noir with a label that lists ingredients and the nutrition facts for a five-ounce serving, including calorie, carbohydrate, fat and protein amounts. In the future, Sokol Blosser plans to offer this information for all its wines.

Two weeks later, Troon Vineyard in Grants Pass announced it was adding QR codes to the ingredient labels it launched in 2023. The codes direct consumers to the winery’s website to receive information on ingredients, nutritional information and wine packaging, including bottle weight.

Part of the wineries’ motivation to act, they say, was a belief that the United States would soon follow the E.U.’s lead, and that the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) would eventually require ingredient and nutritional labeling in some form. For Sokol Blosser, it was also a matter of ensuring that the wines they exported to Europe complied with E.U. law.

Craig Camp, Troon’s general manager, thinks that while it is inevitable the TTB will follow Europe’s lead, he does expect pushback from the larger producers. He believes large industrial producers fear consumers will react negatively to the additives they use.

“Ninety percent of the wines in the marketplace are made that way,” Camp says. “I think people will be particularly surprised by how much sugar is involved.”

But Troon and Sokol Blosser are eager to keep up with consumer and trade partners’ desire for ingredient and nutritional information access. “We’re a small niche winery working with niche varietals,” Camp continues. “People who buy our wines want to know this information, and we want them to have it.”

For Sokol Blosser president Alex Sokol Blosser, it was also a matter of capturing the attention of a particular market segment. “Millennials and Gen Z-ers want this information, and they could care less about descriptions on the label like ‘this wine smells like black roses that have been kissed by butterflies,’” he says.

Sokol Blosser and Troon are momentarily ahead of the curve. Does their positioning offer a competitive advantage? “I want to think it will be good for sales because consumers want this information, and we want to show them that we are an open book,” says Robin Howell, Sokol Blosser’s head winemaker.

Howell adds that she looks forward to consumers being able to compare her wines to brands stressing lower calories, such as Skinnygirl Wines. A Skinnygirl wine typically registers 100 calories per five-ounce serving, compared with Sokol Blosser’s rosé, which has 117 calories, or Troon’s Roussanne, which has 102 calories.

Sokol Blosser also notes one big surprise: the positive reaction from winery team members who are diabetics. “There are a lot of people in this country who have diabetes, and I never stopped to think about how important being able to track carbs in their wine would be for them,” Sokol Blosser says.

Of course, placing nutritional information on the labels isn’t new. Oregon wineries like Brick House Wines, Omero Cellars and Art + Science already blazed this trail. But action from Sokol Blosser and Troop suggest it won’t take long until other Oregon wineries follow suit—and with them, potentially, wineries nationwide. At the annual Willamette Valley Wineries Association in February, approximately half of the attendees raised their hands when asked if they were planning to add ingredient and/or nutritional information to their labels.

“I think this type of labeling will become more typical, and not just with the biodynamic and regenerative wineries,” Camp says. “I think Oregon, as always, will lead the way in this category.”

However, questions linger about any future mandatory TTB labeling regulations. “What is considered an ingredient?” Sokol Blosser wonders. “That is the biggest concern of wineries.”

Howell hopes that the TTB requires wineries to list only what makes it into the wine and not processing aids, which she says is how the E.U. handles ingredients. For example, Sokol Blosser used bentonite as a fining agent for their rosé. Since it’s racked off and a consumer doesn’t ingest it, bentonite doesn't appear on the wine's label.

Another concern? The cost of nutritional testing at a laboratory, which Sokol Blosser says costs $400 for each vintage of wine. Jay Somers of J.C. Somers Vintner believes that even one more cost to production could be challenging. “Our margins shrink every year,” Somers says. “Even with paying one employee a ridiculously low salary, as a small producer, we at best break even.”

That $400 test may not be necessary for every wine, admits Howell, who already tests for alcohol level, sugar levels and titratable acidity. Using a standardized glycerin number, Howell says she can calculate the nutritional numbers for future labels. But for his part, Sokol Blosser describes his winery’s overall labeling costs as “minimal.”

Whatever the TTB decides to do, Sokol Blosser says, “We and other wineries want the TTB and the E.U. to be on the same page.”

Our Labeling Coverage

• In "The E.U. Is Adding Nutrition Info to Wine Labels. Is the U.S. Next?" Writer-at-Large Aleks Zecevic digs deep into the details of the mandate and how it could impact U.S. producers.
• Organic wines from the E.U. may no longer be labeled as such in America because of new U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations. Reporter Kate Dingwall explains why.
• "What Makes a Good Wine Label?" asks Paul Gregutt. In this piece, he shares the three key elements.
• Labeling terms can often be confusing and misleading. Gregutt explores which words have meaning, which ones don't and what consumers should pay attention to.

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The post As Oregon Wineries Add Ingredient and Nutrition Info to Labels, Will More Follow? appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.

But two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nightlife goes on. Investigative reporter Adam Robb has been traveling into the country to talk to locals and document everyday life for everyday citizens who have been living amongst the backdrop of war. 

In his journey, which he wrote about for Wine Enthusiast, Robb visited experimental cocktail bars that highlight foraged ingredients—some of which hail from the forests around Chernobyl—coffee roasteries, dance clubs and Neapolitan-style pizzerias, observing the atmosphere and chatting with the hospitality professionals who aim to bring a sense of normalcy to people living through extraordinary times.

Along the way, Robb learned how living amongst drone and missile attacks, drafts and daily deaths and injuries “brings out a real selflessness,” he tells us on this week’s episode of The Wine Enthusiast Podcast. 

“People don’t expect to be driven to that level of virtue,” he says. “The best of them experience a level of empathy that no human being is normally pushed to experience.”

Listen as Robb goes deep on his experiences and offers a peek into the Russo-Ukrainian War through the lens of the country’s hospitality industry. He shares insights into how drinks professionals have been stepping up to create safe spaces for their communities to come together and enjoy the moment, the creativity of the Ukrainian mixology scene, how it warrants a place in the international spotlight and his plans to try to help it garner the attention it deserves.

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Episode Transcript

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.

Speakers: Sara Ventiera, Adam Robb, Samantha Sette

Sara Ventiera  00:09

Hello, and welcome to the Wine Enthusiast podcast. You’re serving the drinks culture and the people who drive it. I’m Sara Ventiera, senior digital editor here at Wine Enthusiast. On February 24 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine in what has become the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War Two. More than two years later, the fighting continues. But for Ukrainians who have stayed in the country everyday life goes on. Last year, investigative reporter Adam Robb spent a night out bar hopping in Lviv and documented his evening eating pizza and drinking gin and tonics to the sound of air raid warnings for Wine Enthusiast. He recently returned from a major bar event in Kyiv. So we decided to check in on the current state of the country and its nightlife scene. Listen to find out about the lessons learned about trying to live a normal life against the backdrop of war.  All right, Adam, so you wrote this really amazing piece for us about a night out drinking in Ukraine with air sirens voiced by Mark Hamill, going off in the background, lots of people drinking and living their lives. Let’s just start from the beginning. Why did you go to Ukraine in the first place?

Adam Robb  01:26

Yeah, so the day of the Russian invasion, I remember I was in Paris working on the travel story, and meeting with some documentary producers about a trafficking investigation I was working on at the time, and I was in the bathtub with the Meurice drinking Champagne in the bottle of Ruinart that, like they sent up. And I was watching the news of the invasion on the TV screen built into the bathroom mirror from the bathtub. And that’s my first association with alcohol in Ukraine, and that was February ’22. So, December two years ago, at the end of 2022, I should say spent most of 2021 and 2022, more than a year and a half investigating a big crypto fraud scheme. And by the end of 2022, that story had led me down another rabbit hole. And suddenly I found myself having dinner at Torrisi. So with Ja Rule. Now, Ja Rule and his business partners who declined to partake in this particular fraud scam, I was investigating. And he and his partners were so proud of this fact. Now generally, two business partners, one was in the background really just on paper, and the other was running his day to day operations. And that guy is my point person. So, right before dinner—I don’t know why I hadn’t done this earlier—but I looked up the third partner, the one on paper, and I’m looking at the Google results back when Google Search worked. And I thought, wow, this guy has the worst SEO imaginable because every result for his name is about some guy who was arrested 20 years ago for kidnapping and torturing and branding someone. And it got me thinking, when was Ja Rule in prison? And what was this guy in prison? Were they in prison at the same time? And it’ll start to click in my head. So, now I’m a little freaked out. I have just enough time to watch the episode of What Order SVU they made about Ja Rule’s business partner. You could look it up and watch it on streaming. It’s called “Branded.” And I’m watching the episode but don’t have to leave for dinner. And I’m stressing about how do I bring this up in conversation? Where do I bring this up? Do I bring this up and I get to Torrisi and Ja Rule is running three hours late, so I’m sitting with his publicist, drinking Negronis, eating bread and finally Ja sits down. And I’ll say he’s incredibly charming and charismatic and person and the waiter rushes over, I remember, Ja charmed the reading glasses right off the waiter’s face and wore them the rest of the night, reading the menu and the waiter Ja Rule, if you wanted an emergency martini to catch up with us. And instead Ja Rule ordered a Moscow Mule, but he caught himself and said “Wait, no, we can’t say that anymore because of Russia.” And he ordered a Kyiv instead, and I just must have made some mental note that at that moment, like wow, Ja Rule is so about international affairs and boycotting Russia, and good for him. So, in the back of my mind that Ruinart moment, the Moscow Mule moment, I think subconsciously, I’ve been primed to think about Ukraine and drinking in context together for a year before I committed to traveling there. And a few months after the Ja Rule dinner, I’m about to publish the investigation but Buzzfeed News shuts down before the story is published. And right away, I found another investigation for New York Magazine. And I remember I was in a group that maybe were in Beverly Hills at Dante, I get the phone call from my editor: go ahead with the investigation. And I’m off to the Cannes Film Festival for a few weeks to investigate an LA bar owner turned movie producer who had previously confessed to me that he was under investigation for terrorism. And it was years earlier we were at this great little sushi restaurant in Silverlake that isn’t there anymore. And he just got off the phone with his lawyer who had broken the news to him and maybe he had a little too much sake and felt confessional at that moment, and now all these years later, he’s a movie producer with a project at Cannes, it’s a big story. And the week after I get back from France, the story becomes a little too heated, and that story gets killed. And first I’ll just say, because this is the Wine Enthusiast podcast, I do all my food and drink and travel writing and research while also reporting out longer investigative, intensive, aggressive stories.. So, if you do find yourself in Cannes, you’d be remiss not check out the Turkish Coffee Negroni and the Tobacco and Date Old Fashioned at Rüya, a Turkish restaurant on the terrace at Carlton Hotel in Cannes or take a long walk to the Bijou Plage from the vendor central guys at the end of the Pointe Croisette and grab a Garibaldi there at sunset. But after two of those long investigations got killed back-to-back, I needed a break from writing about bad people. And I’m looking to write something more positive. So, last August, I’m wondering what to do next, and I read a story in The Washington Post by their Ukraine Bureau Chief. And it’s all about how Ukrainians are boycotting Campari, because it’s sold in Russia. And I realized a few things while reading the story. One, I guess, I can’t drink Garibaldis anymore. Two, I realize it’s possible to write lifestyle coverage about a country at war. Their story, The Washington Post story, is written through a business lens, but they’re also talking to local bar owners. And it made me think long before Alex Garland’s Civil War movie had come out this past spring, like what would lifestyle reporting journalism look like during a ground war, and in Civil War, it’s like a road trip movie following journalists traveling from New York to DC. And one of the journalists writes for, quote unquote, like what’s left of The New York Times. And that was the headspace I was in reading this Washington Post story a year ago thinking like, if we are at war in America, and we also have media jobs, what would The New York Times’ style section, food section, travel section, T Magazine, what would Wine Enthusiast be publishing every day, every month? And that’s when it all kind of clicked for me to start covering the bar scene over there. And I hate to say this, but before I pitched Wine Enthusiast, I pitched another nameless spirits publication, and the editor, that outlet had told me that this was a terrible idea. Because if I wrote about the hospitality scene in Ukraine, they wouldn’t be seen as suffering enough. And this is really upsetting to me, because I think, if I’m living in a country at war, and I’m trying to hustle and do my thing, and live my best life—because we only have this one life—and it’s one moment, we’re only this age once, that I would want some foreign journalists to find me in America, and capture me with all my dignity and spirit. And I would want there to be some document that said, I got through this time being active and creative, being a great bartender, a great chef, giving comfort to others contributing something, not that I was just some anonymous face waiting in line for a bowl of borscht from some international aid organization. And, and I’ve been guilty of that, I had written a story prior for Food & Wine Magazine, where I interviewed José Andrés on the phone while he was driving out of Ukraine, and I tried to go with him and it didn’t work out. So, I don’t really have a sense of the ground. And, so I finally went on my own, I wasn’t with any American chefs, and I wasn’t shadowing anyone, I just kind of immersed myself in it. And I think my reporting was better off for it. And the third thing I realized, during The Washington Post story was I realized war reporters go to terrible bars. I realize now, when I see a war movie, and they’re all the hotel, bar drinking, bragging, fucking, watching CNN, whatever they’re doing, they really just don’t know where else to get a good drink and they don’t care. So, I Googled the bars in the Washington Post article, and I just knew there had to be better options out there. And I think the first thing I did was check the World’s 50 Best Bars Discovery list. If there was a legitimate great bar over there, as a starting point, it would be on their list, and there were a few. So, I followed those bars to Instagram and found the bartenders and seeing who they follow, where they go, what they post, and then moved on to restaurants and began piecing together an itinerary and requesting interviews. I should point out, it’s an insane thing to do. It felt very good. And I just wanted to contribute something positive to the world. I wanted to challenge myself. And again, it’s an insane thing to say, but at that point, I’d been really burnt out from investigations and I felt like I’d rather die than have their story killed. And, in terms of the kind of reporting I’d like to do, these stories aren’t offending litigious people and they would see the light of day. And that was really reassuring to me. So, no matter what happened, the reporting wouldn’t be frustrated by some outside force. And I felt better and safer doing it. 

Sara Ventiera  09:06

Well, I think those were two things that really struck me about the story when I was going through it. One, was, A, the bar scene sounded incredible, and the cocktails and creativity just sounded like what you would find in I mean any major city with a great culinary scene. But on top of it, the sort of sense of normalcy in the midst of this, you know, major war,  it kind of struck me in a way where it’s like, it’s hard to imagine what that would be like, you know, as an American who hasn’t lived through, you know, a ground war like that. You know, like how do you carry on with your life while you’re surrounded by fighting and you know, airstrikes and all of those sorts of things. And I think you did such a great job of sort of like, showing what that process was like.

Adam Robb  09:56

It was just surprising to me being on the ground, I think, I was also working on story at the time for Conde Nast Traveler about Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw and them setting up business there, and I felt on my first trip to Ukraine that it was so easy interview everyone that they were very focused, very engaged, and I guess very stoic. And that surprised me. No one, no one was overly emotional while I was speaking to them. And then when I got to Warsaw, and I spoke to Ukrainians who had left the country behind, and they knew they were safe now, they were the people who were emotional, they were the people who cried, because they walked away and, and went toward safety and a better life, and I think they had some, some residual guilt. But everyone on the ground in Ukraine was just everyday living their fullest day-to-day life, even though like the PTSD, like the collective PTSD of, of whole towns, villages, cities, was just, it was like electricity in the air, like you couldn’t not feel it, no matter where you went. And eventually you figure out that there are bars, where people go to, to drink, to cope. And there are bars, you can quietly or loudly celebrate or just live for today. And so it took a while to get a sense that those were two very distinct things. 

Sara Ventiera  11:16

Yeah, I think I mean, you seem to in the piece, highlight the bars where people we’re living for today. I know, you mentioned that it was mostly women that were in the bars, because a lot of the men were out fighting. What was the difference between, you know, the vibes in those bars versus the vibes, and the ones where people were going just to cope?

Adam Robb  11:37

I remember my first day in Lviv, going to a coffee shop, and it being very busy. It was a beautiful, sunny day, last September/October. And there were lots of people outside with their laptops working or, or just relaxing in the sun. But there was a very quiet energy about it. And I couldn’t quite figure out where that was coming from. And the coffee shop owner explained to me that you just don’t know, if the person next to you just lost someone, or they just found out they’re briefly being drafted. And everyone’s mindful of that in an environment like that, and want to be respectful and quiet, and no one gets too rowdy. And then a few hundred feet away, there was a bar called People Place that had a DJ in the window, and had like groups of women, young women dressed up going out for the night, and like kicking off their night there with a non-Aperol, Aperol Spritz because they were boycotting Aperol. And it was crazy how that shift could just be a few hundred feet apart. And you could walk from one room to another.  

Sara Ventiera  12:50

Well, and I mean, what is it— you know, again, hard to imagine—but what is it like going into a bar like that? You know, most bar scenes, it’s a lot of people looking to go out and meet members of whatever sex they’re attracted to. So for it to be mostly women, like, what did that feel like?

Adam Robb  13:11

It took a minute to realize that there were no men. That happened to me more than once that I remember just a couple of weeks ago, leaving Ukraine on my last trip, that I was taking the train out back to Poland, and I’m looking around the train car. And it took me a minute to realize I was the only man on the train. And the men since the second day of the war, they haven’t been allowed to leave the country, if they’re able bodied between a certain age, and it was just all women and children around me. And it’s just like a shocking thing to witness and realize that these are the people left behind. The men, the male bar owners that I’ve met, seemed more worried about business than about being drafted, which is good. But really, they were just living for that day in that moment. And I think the women going to really busy popular bars like that were very much doing the same. There was a sense I think, a year ago, where it was more inappropriate, more looked down upon to party. And then on this past trip, I went to a brand new bar in Kyiv called Haram that was like a multi story underground nightclub, like a big popular steakhouse in Kyiv. And they had opened in the past year during the war. And it had multiple, you go in downstairs and just the coat check is the size of like other bars I’ve been to and then you go into this massive cavernous underground party space and there’s multiple like unique bars. One was like a smoking bar where every drink is smoked and you can also smoke cigarettes.  And then you like travel downstairs, to this other bar beneath with a huge sacrilegious stained window of the crucifixion, which is also the beginning orgy and there’s a gospel choir with a live band on the side performing like Bruno Mars songs and rap songs, and everyone’s like dancing and just letting off steam, and I think that was kind of missing in the first year. And now people feel either they’re in for a long haul and they can engage with those feelings where it’s okay to just like, let go and let loose. But those are behind closed doors. I think in Kyiv way more than in Lviv, you saw more speakeasies, you saw more unmarked bars, where the best bars in town and the 50 Best Discovery bars like Loggerhead and Beatnik those bars are almost like real speakeasies. You’re not meant to distract from the more somber energy of the city, I guess. 

Sara Ventiera  15:40

And so, okay, so your first trip was to Lviv, right? And this last trip you went, to Kviv or did you travel to both cities? 

Adam Robb  15:50

I went to more places this time. So, yeah, I got a better sense of the country on the most recent trip. But I started in Lviv, took the train to Kviv for what was the first bar show in Ukraine in three years. It was a partnership with Diageo Bar Academy, they put on a show called, uh, the Ukrainian word for unity. And they invited all the best bartenders from around the country. I think they came from everywhere, but Kharkiv. They came from Odessa, Lviv, and Kyvi. And it was the first time like bartenders can see each other in three years. I remember speaking to a bartender from Odessa who has a bar, Fakultat, which is like one of the best bars down there. And he said, his friends don’t come to the bar he owns, he tells them not to come because Odessa is so affected by drone attacks. And drones are really cheap. And so, while Kyiv is always subject to missile attacks, they have a strong missile defense system. But you wouldn’t waste the money to use a missile against a drone. And so the drone attacks are very common in Odessa, and it’s a more dangerous place. And, so he lost his staff, but they left to go to bars in the E.U. or elsewhere. But he was the owner. And he just kind of like been, you know, alone every day in the bar opening and powering through, like representing Ukrainian Odessa and trying to find people with that same spirit like to work alongside him. But he was so excited to come up to Kyiv  and see guys from some of the other bar programs, women at the bar programs to get a sense of just what we’ve all been working on the past three years and to try each others’ drinks and new menus and new concepts. And, even though bar shows are so common, and there’s like the Rome bar show was like a week later, and two resort bar shows next week, and then Bar Convent in Brooklyn and Tales of the Cocktail. But like, it’s a common thing that’s easy enough for local bartenders to find in their community. But it was a big deal to have a bar show in Kyiv. And it just brought out the best of everyone. And so that was the other side of the city. And the surrealness of that was that the night before everyone had arrived, everyone stayed at the same hotel on that Friday night. And there was news that week that Russia was going to attack, like blow up two Kyiv hospitals because they said they were actually like secret military bases. And this was kind of like, I think it’s in the news, it’s like the rumor going around, that ever was nervous there was gonna be an attack on Kyiv that weekend. And, so I remember taking the train from Lyiv to Kyiv, it was like a six hour train ride and getting there at 10:30 pm, and everything closes at like 11 pm and curfew is at midnight. And, like everyone making a rush toward McDonald’s while the alarm is going off at 10:35 pm, and they’re turning people away. And then I had to find my car and it’s my Holiday Inn all before midnight, and then just getting there and hearing the air sirens and when the air sirens wind down, use your dogs howling the street. And you just hear that from like 11 pm till like I think was like 4 am that night. And by 5am I went back to sleep and by 10 or 11 am I guess I woke up and, and like everyone else, I made my way to the bar show. And I realized, I’ve come to realize being there. And it’s a bit of a thing if you learn what’s important, and you put the small things about last night behind you, and you live in the moment. And so everyone went to that bar show. It was a sunny day. Nothing else happened that weekend. And we all lived in the moment and that was a very inspiring thing to witness. So, yeah, so when I rode the train from Lviv to Kyiv, I rode the train with other bartenders who have bars in Lviv and they were very excited for the bar show, just to have something else to go somewhere to see people. And the FMB director at the hotel I was staying at in Lviv, The Grand Hotel, the best hotel in town, she was very proud of the hotel bar program and they had just opened,  like a big Hennessy lounge near a cigar lounge. I don’t think people realize people are coming to spend money and they’re updating things and they’re proud of the environment they create for other people. And she had been through a lot. She was saying her brother-in-law is fighting east now, that she’d lost her brother fighting in the east last year. And she still wakes up every day and it’s really proud of the bars and the restaurants she runs in the hotel. And we got to talking about the program, and people don’t just like to live with their head in the sand or they live in a bomb shelter. Like you want to go out and experience life, experience your interest, your passion, your career and advance yourself, what would make you happy every day, and and feel fulfilled. So, no matter where I went in Ukraine, it was good to see people behaving that way. And I just think that’s something that gets a little underreported.

Sara Ventiera  20:50

Yeah, I mean, it seems, you know, I again, can only imagine what it’s like living under those circumstances and how that must impact your nervous system. Like, I’m sure hearing air raid sirens or as you mentioned, Mark Hamill from Star Wars’ voice going off announcing an air raid, has to affect you on a level that, you know, is beyond just anxiety, but like impacting your body and like your overall nervous system. 

Adam Robb  21:17

I’m glad to say that Mark Hamill’s voice does not give me PTSD right now. But it was a crazy thing, when I was in LA a year ago, I was with this music manager who’s friendly with him. He and his wife were talking about having Mark Hamill over for dinner that Friday night. And I was like, oh, what a nice thing it is to have Luke Skywalker over at your house. And the closest I’ve ever come to that is hearing Mark Hamill telling me to seek shelter during an air raid in Lviv. And it’s a weird thing that he did that, that he recorded. A different voice does it in Ukrainian, but the English version of the air alert app is Mark’s voice telling you “your overconfidence is your weakness,” which is something he says that the Emperor in I think “Return of the Jedi,” and to seek shelter. And then you hear this like a piercing air siren emitting from your phone. And then when you get the all clear, he wishes you “may the force be with you” and tells you it’s all okay. It’s comforting and eerie at the same time. I guess it’s nice to hear a familiar voice overseas. But also be aware you’re listening to a recording that exists long after you know society has vanished off the face of the earth. But still, Mark Hamill’s voice lives on an app warning people to seek shelter, a little dystopian, but it depends who you’re with and it depends on your own seek-your-own-adventure attitude. But there are people who turn the alarm off. And I’ve gotten to the point where I trust people more now in telegram groups, telegram chats to tell me what’s going on than just the more general app, which is just a picture of a missile, saying like, you know, seek shelter. And you adapt and a lot of people that Friday night, because the missiles ever came from Russia. And just the alarm sounded all night. They went to sleep where they tried to sleep, but did not go to the bomb shelter. And the first time the air raid siren went off, the first time I heard Mark Hamill’s voice I was at this bar called Siaivo, which is this amazing, two-story, coffee shop, cocktail bar that reminds me of Drink in Boston. It had low countertops and a very engaging bartender across the way to make you whatever you wanted. And it was with the bar manager, the bar owner, there, and like great guys, and they didn’t even download the app yet. And they were telling me they were looking at their phone when the alarm was sounded. So, I’d download the app right away. And I was like, should we go? And they were like, no, no, no, like, our friends tell us through Telegram that it’s actually just like, Russian planes are flying overhead doing an exercise or something. And it’s not anything we need to immediately prepare for. And, so I stayed out, I knew someone who was staying at a hotel in town, and she messaged me, and she had gone down to the bomb shelter of the hotel, which also doubled at the hotel spa, like in the basement, and she was sitting there on a bench. And people were like in their towels going to it from the spa. She felt embarrassed. And I decided like, you know, you shouldn’t be down there, like, it’s okay, got her out of the bomb shelter and took her drinking. I was glad she cooperated with that and trusted me. And we had a great night and we were able to have like five more hours of our life back to go out and enjoy the city and not worry. And then the alarm sounded, it was all clear, and we were good to enjoy the rest of the evening. But I kind of feel that the only story you find in a bomb shelter is if something happens to you there. So, that’s not where I’d want to be.

Samantha Sette  24:37

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Sara Ventiera  25:09

You detailed the night in the story a bit where you went to the first party since Siaivo. Alright, so that’s how you pronounce it?

Adam Robb  25:16

 I hope so. 

Sara Ventiera  25:17

Okay. And I think you were drinking gin and tonics, I believe.

Adam Robb  25:22

Yeah, they had, they had a great gin bar. And it was the same weekend, or same days as like a big tech conference. And so the bar was like, packed with people from the tech conference, it was rush hour happy hour, it was a full scene. So, it was free just to witness like a normal weekday and see a thriving city and a thriving bar, and it feels like home. And the more you enter environments like that bar at that time, like, the more it feels relatable to you, in America, or anywhere. And it feels like, okay, this is just a normal life, they’re living a normal life. And so it just makes you feel safer and more at ease every day, which was like a good feeling. And it’s a collective feeling. If everyone goes to the bar, if everyone goes out after work, then it just makes the people around them feel more secure. And I remember talking to coffee shop owners, Svit Kavy, the oldest roastery in town. And they were saying how very early on in the war, when the siren sounded, the sense was that everyone should close the doors and pack up and go in the shelter, either like beneath a coffee shop or find one nearby. Pretty much every building had a basement, at least in Lviv. And they got the sense over time that their customers would rather come out. And they felt psychologically safer, healthier, better for it for all being together in the coffee shop, or all being together in the bar, instead of being alone in your basement. And so it was a unique example of resilience to experience. And you don’t really think that just having a gin and tonic at a bar during the evening rush is an act of resilience or an act of rebellion. But it is. It’s a small thing that makes people feel good and feel strong. And that was inspiring to witness.

Sara Ventiera  27:14

And, you know, I know you went to a bunch of other places as well. And I’d say again, the cocktails and the mixology sounded very impressive. What drinks and dishes were you most impressed by?

Adam Robb  27:32

The bar where I was when I got the all clear that first night, second night  was Sino Experimental. Andre, the original owner, and bartender there, he—and a lot of bar owners—talked about how before the war, they all had to kind of like, operate through COVID, which had its own challenges, and then operate in the war. But, so during COVID, he did a lot of batch drinks, which led to him canning or bottling cocktails. And then during the war, he got really into foraging. And it was fascinating. Because I think, everyone, there’s probably something disassociative a little bit, everyone likes to put out their minds when they’re over there. And I think one thing I put out of my mind was wow, we’re really close to Chernobly. And having watched the HBO series—you just don’t think people are foraging in Ukraine. And like in the forest in the West like Transcarpathia, or in the east around Chernobyl, and then putting those things in food or drink. And it’s not good. And he was talking about how he made a really popular cherry soda whiskey drink and the cherries all came from a foraging trip, up a mountain he met someone who had on his property with wild cherry trees growing and offered him all the cherries, he wanted to use them to make the drink. And it’s my assumption that I’m sure foraging is safe and bright enough in the west. And so his drinks, which were based on lots of ingredients, including mushrooms and other things he found like that, that made the bar popular and it allowed him to really stand out at that time. But then, just like last week or two weeks ago, I was with Scott Klopotenko, who’s the most famous chef in Ukraine. He has a new cookbook route about capturing the flavors of all the regions in Ukraine. And he was telling me that before the war, he actually foraged around Chernobyl and served things he found there in the restaurant, like little touches and garnishes in dishes—which absolutely blew my mind. And he was saddened because of the war, all the forest area around Chernobyl is now laid landmines. So, you can’t park there anymore. But I was surprised to see how it doesn’t bother Ukrainians to at least engage their produce and engage foraging. The last thing I thought about was like where my food and drinks were coming from while I was there. But yeah, Andre at Sino changed the menu every week and he just used what was seasonal, what he could find around to really challenge people’s perception of what you know classic cocktails were, and so that was, that was no surprise. And then he led me to another bar called Bar Over, which was a spin off of a bar called a Ditch Bar in Kharkiv. And Kharkiv is all the way in eastern Ukraine, kind of like near the front line that is attacked. I think I was just horribly attacked the last couple days. And Ditch Bar is one of the last bars standing in Kharkiv, and also one of the best—very cool bars, they take care of their own. People come there and get whatever resources they need, but also they make awesome cocktails. They do canned cocktails to go, and one of the owners from Ditch Bar decided to move west and open in Lviv. And you saw a lot of bar owners from the east more and more opening in the west, where it’s safer. There’s less of a reason to attack the west of Ukraine. And so they were opening in Lviv. And so the open bar over there, and it’s this beautiful, intimate upstairs bar and dining room. And just like class cocktails, I mean, he made an excellent Negroni with a non Campari product. And everyone creates not only great drinks, but really intimate environments, everyone really focuses on making a stand out space that is unique into itself, both for its menu and it’s decor and ambiance, energy, like would make it a bar you would see on a 50 Best Discovery list or 50 Best list if they were judges getting in the country, which there are there aren’t right now. 

Sara Ventiera  31:25  

Yeah, I mean, speaking of which, how did you even get into the country? How did that process work? 

Adam Robb  31:31  

Yeah, I flew from New York to Krakow. Krakow, the nearest big airport to the Ukrainian border and so there’s a great car service called A Transfer, highly recommended. And it’s all Mercedes Sprinter vans or Mercedes. But they’ll take you the six hours it takes to drive from Krakow airport to Lviv for less than the price of an Uber from Midtown to Atlantic City. And so as far as bad ideas go, that was an affordable one. And so they’re great drivers. They know how to navigate Polish customs, and Ukrainian border control. And the first three, three and a half hours to drive from Krakow to the border, it’s just open highways and you see US military equipment, or other NATO military equipment moving into Ukraine. So, you see police cars, like escorting tanks and things up flatbeds, going into the country. And then you get to the border control and it’s multiple lines. Because no planes go into Ukraine or ships, everything comes in now by truck from the west. So, you see miles and miles of lines and trucks that are like everything for World Central Kitchen to fuel, whatever. And so you see those backed up for, I have no idea how long they process, I can imagine how long those drivers like sleeping their trucks, waiting to just move up, I guess one batch at a time, through customs. The car lines are a little bit shorter and so when you enter Ukraine, when you leave the EU,  you leave Poland, you get ushered through, they don’t really like to search your luggage or anything. And then in Ukraine, it’s pretty easy. The only issues are like when you leave Ukraine and get to the EU, I will say they search everything. It takes forever. And I do not recommend the car to leave Ukraine because those lines are tragic. It’s much faster on a train or on a bus. But my experience was that when you leave Ukraine, they open. Like when I was on a train with all the Ukrainian women, they opened every woman’s suitcase and they went through like every possession. They’re just really looking to see what gets smuggled out of Ukraine, into the EU. And yeah, on a human level you can understand that, you know, people want to take valuables with them whatever is important to them and get it, but then I understand you also worry about other kinds of smuggling. But they are very strict and search everything and that slows down the line. So, if it’s six hours going in, it could be like 24 hours going out. So it’s much faster on the train or bus. But the car was the best way. And, so I took the car on the first day and got to Lviv in the morning, and I was slowed down by about an hour. I already had a full schedule of appointments of people to meet and I already missed my first one. I was already feeling over my head because about an hour outside of Lviv traffic just came to a halt, and there was a funeral procession going down the other lane of traffic in whatever small town we were driving through. And our driver got out and I got out, and you saw, like a military band, a whole congregation from a church and young girls like walking behind a hearse with flowers and just the whole town everything stops. And this happens every day because you see the people die every day and there are more every day. And that is one thing that you can’t ignore. And I think that, that was one thing I couldn’t ignore the first time I went. And then the most recent time I went, I think the one that I couldn’t ignore was just how many wounded vets are everywhere, which I did not see a year ago, and how prevalent that was, especially in Kyiv. But going in, we paused for the funeral and then made our way into the city. And I already missed my first appointment with a bakery that I just wrote about last week for New York Magazine that had a viral pastry. And I felt bad because these people, again, have a thriving business, and they’re trying to live their best lives. And you know, I’m late to the game in terms of reporters coming to Ukraine. And so I’m sure they’ve dealt with foreign press before. And, you know, I didn’t need me holding up their whole day. So, it took me a while to get acclimated and to apologize to them, and get a second interview. And that was an adjustment. And I went to the Lviv Tourism Board Office to check in with them, I think they’ve become, they’ve kind of pivoted to being a press liaison office. And they were kind enough to just help smooth over some introductions and, and set me on the right foot for the rest of the day to go smoothly. And they felt good. And then, you know, within hours, I think, after that I really felt at home with everyone I spoke to. And you know, you go to the hotel, you check in the hotel, like you would anywhere else. I think the only thing is that American Express does not work anywhere in Ukraine. And other than that I felt pretty at ease, and that you check in is like any other hotel with all the amenities. Then use that as my jumping off point to just before we town. And then the only thing that was like, I guess little eerie was the end of the first night coming back there, and just like realizing, like the streets out the window are empty. And we’re all just indoors now until the next day. 

Sara Ventiera  36:52  

Yeah, I mean, I guess that’s like my last question, like having gone twice now and having experienced what it’s, you know, or getting a little taste of what it’s like to live life, or at least see life being lived in the midst of war. What’s your takeaway from those experiences, like, what did it leave you with?

Adam Robb  37:17  

It just left me feeling. I wish when this is all over, and people go back, and like, look at the reporting done. I know all the reporting that everyone’s doing over there, at the moment is very important when we’re talking about troop movements and aid and, and money. But I just think the human aspect is a little bit overlooked. And, and I would love to know, after all this, I’d love to see more reporting like that, and just more peoples’ stories told. Because, for the average citizen in all these cities, and towns or villages everywhere, there are just moments that would be otherwise recognized or celebrated just aren’t being seen by the outside world, or even maybe, you know, in the larger world in the country, and that just makes me feel terrible. I just think about how in the US there’s been such a shift from outlets closing and a shift from hard news reporting to lifestyle reporting and influencers and, and TikTok and personal essays, and I think it’s ingrained in Americans under any conditions, the COVID the pandemic is example this like, we’ll always kind of like, celebrate and recognize what we’re doing amongst ourselves. And I don’t see enough of that. I think maybe it’s not ingrained in people over there anyway, to just live that way. And maybe it’s too narcissistic, but people should get recognized for the good work they do. And I just wish there were more reporters there exploring that. So, I find that fulfilling and it motivates me to keep going back. So, I’m going back in a couple weeks, I’m going back in August to make a documentary. And I just want people there to feel more seen. And and I just want American readers to have more empathy and see themselves in these people and not think that victims of any war, any violence, a tragedy anywhere are like some other kinds of people that aren’t like themselves, because going over there you very much feel these people are are just like you, and I just want that to be better recognized.

Sara Ventiera  39:35  

Yeah, I think that you did a really great job of sort of highlighting the everyday life and like everyday successes and accomplishments of people, but also just the resilience and sort of will to keep going in the face of catastrophic circumstances. I’d imagine that it would probably leave a mark and sort of change you to some extent after having experienced that where most of us have not come even close. 

Adam Robb  40:01  

I think it changed for the better. I think that the people I’ve spoken with would talk about how they’ve been living their lives the last two and a half years, the best of them experience a level of empathy that no human being is normally pushed to experience. And the way they just see themself and one another, and are eager to help one another and engage one another, it brings out a real selflessness and everyone, that is, people don’t expect to be driven to that level of virtue. And it’s a great thing they are and they recognize it’s a great thing, that they have become virtuous in that way. But it shouldn’t take a tragedy to make people that virtuous. 

Sara Ventiera  40:46  

So would you say the takeaway is, we all need to cultivate more empathy for one another? 

Adam Robb  40:53  

Cultivate more empathy and see yourself in other people and that diplomacy is always the best solution.

Sara Ventiera  41:02  

Well, on that note, I really appreciate your time with us and your work on the story. It was a pleasure to read, and we’re very happy to have it on our site. And thank you. 

Adam Robb  41:15  

Thank you so much.

Sara Ventiera  41:21  

It’s hard to imagine how one would go on living life in such extraordinary circumstances. But we’re grateful to get a peek into the ways Ukraine’s hospitality professionals have attempted to cultivate a sense of normalcy and escape for their community. How would you cope? We want to know, you can email us your comments and questions at podcast@winenthusiast.net. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify and anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows. You can also go to wineenthusiast.com/podcast for more episodes and transcripts. I’m Sara Ventiera, thanks for listening.

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Nowadays, Galicia’s mist-shrouded hills—best known for Albariño production—are covered in a variety of grapevines, some so old the grapes they produce don’t even have names. Historically, these vines have been integral to the local subsistence economy, providing generations of families with wine to drink at home. The region’s humid, oceanic climate yields fresh, minerally wines with what growers describe as a uniquely Atlantic character. 

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But this diversity may also play a key role in viticulture’s future. As rising temperatures and worsening drought conditions wreak havoc on global agriculture, growers and researchers in Spain have been working to resurrect nearly extinct grapes, both to preserve biological heritage and to discover useful genetic traits that could help the industry weather climate change. 

The Untapped Potential of Ancient Grapes

An increasingly erratic climate is disrupting the wine industry, with European Union data showing that Spain’s overall wine production fell by 14% from 2020 to 2021, largely due to extreme weather events. 

Due to historical factors like the phylloxera plague of the 1800s—as well as market forces driving consumers towards the greatest hits—just 13 of the world’s 10,000 known grape varieties cover one-third of global vineyard area. According to Eurostat data, the Tempranillo grape alone represents nearly 14% of all red-wine grape cultivation in the E.U. despite its sensitivity to drought and infection.  

According to Ignacio Morales-Castilla, an ecologist and wine grape researcher at Madrid’s Alcalá University, one of the most powerful tools against climate change is crop diversity. He estimates that if growers keep their current varieties, a 2°C (3.6°F) global temperature increase could eliminate 56% of the world’s wine regions. If growers adopted more climate change–resistant varieties, this number could be reduced by half.

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“We’re seeing some varieties that, even though they have been perfectly suited to their climate over the last 50, 60, 100 years, they are now in recent years starting to fail,” he says. “Growers are already thinking, ‘What are the substitutes going to be?’”

Galicia’s humidity makes it ideal for mildew and other grape-harming fungi to flourish. Increased fungal outbreaks have been correlated with effects of climate change, like higher temperatures and more concentrated rainfall, so future wine-growing conditions may favor more fungi-resistant varieties, Morales says. 

Combing the Countryside for Old Vines

In 1987, Galician viticultural researcher Carmen Martinez and her colleagues at the Biological Mission of Galicia began a monumental task: collecting, documenting and naming every indigenous grape variety growing in the region.

They wanted to locate and exploit the varieties so well-adapted to their environments that they could be used to produce quality wines without chemical treatment.

“Some varieties have a very particular level of adaptation to these climate conditions, while others don’t,” Martinez says. “But those that don’t work well here might work better elsewhere, under other conditions.” 

The best-adapted grapes have spent centuries in their soil and climate, growing on “century vines” more than 300 years old. During the study, Martinez and her team would arrive in a village and ask the townspeople if they knew anyone who had one. Everyone, it seemed, either had a century vine on their property or knew someone who did. 

Many of the vines they found were planted generations ago to make wine for home consumption. The researchers identified more than 50 distinct varieties in Galicia and neighboring Asturias: Blanco Lexítimo, Souson, Caiño Tinto, Tinto Castañal, Caiño Blanco, Espadeiro and Albarello, to name a few.

Ancient Grapes to Know 

Ratiño 

In the Salnés Valley of the Rias Baixas, in the northwest corner of Iberia, tucked among rolling, grapevine-covered hills, lies the Viña Moraima cooperative. The small bodega grew from a group of 11 growers who joined together in 2006 to preserve and introduce to the world the wines their families had been enjoying for generations. 

Moraima member Roberto Rivas had known about the century vine growing on his family’s property since he was a child, although he didn’t know the variety. His grandfather taught him to care for the vine and how to prune and water it according to its specific needs. 

Only once Martinez and the Biological Mission got involved in 2014 was it identified as Ratiño, an ancient white grape that once covered the hills of the Salnés, but today exists on just a few scattered plants. 

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Moraima is now months away from selling the world’s first Ratiño varietal. Named Mausiño—a combination of the English “mouse” and the Galician diminutive “iño,” which means small—the wine is pale yellow and minerally, with notes of green apple, citrus and balsamic, typical of the “Atlantic” wines produced among the cool ocean breezes and saline soils of the Salnés. 

The vines’ productivity remains low, but Moraima’s head enologist Roberto Taibo says Ratiño’s ancient roots means it offers unique advantages, like resistance to drought and mildew. 

“Having a variety rooted in the soil in which it’s lasted for centuries, we expect that diseases won’t be as aggressive,” Taibo says. 

Albarello

In the mountainous Ribeira Sacra, researcher and viticulturist José Enrique Pérez was among the first growers to cultivate Albarello—also known as Brancellao—after the phylloxera plague nearly drove it to extinction. 

He’d known of its existence, being once one of the Ribeira Sacra’s most abundant varieties, but after scouring the countryside, Pérez could only find a single Albarello vine, located on a private vineyard. Now, he has hundreds growing on his property. 

“It’s balanced, the vine doesn’t need as much care,” he says. “It’s more resistant to a lot of diseases.”  

Albarello is hardy and resists mildew and the botrytis fungus. Its wine is rich, with subtle notes of red fruit and oak, deep red in color but clear enough to allow light to pass through. 

But despite its useful adaptations and high quality, Albarello’s productivity remains low. Pérez says his vines produce about two kilograms each of the grape, while a Mencía vine—one of Ribeira Sacra’s most widely-planted red grapes—might produce twice as much. Although numerous vineyards now sell Albarello wines, it would take a massive shift in local business mentality for the grape to be cultivated on a large-scale. 

“People are very skeptical,” Pérez says. “They simply grow it to say, ‘Look, we’re on the wave, we have these novelties.’ We would need new people with a younger mentality to come take charge of this.”

Caiño Blanco and Caiño Tinto

Back in the Rias Baixas, Attis Bodega sells an entire line of wines made from Galicia’s minority grapes, including Albarello, as well as Caiño Blanco and Caiño Tinto. 

Caiño Tinto in particular is quickly becoming a favored red among Rias Baixas growers, with its large, thick-skinned grapes producing fragrant wines with hints of licorice and balsamic. 

The genetically distinct Caiño Blanco is also gaining attention for its complex profile and its similarities to Albariño, though its stronger acidity, lower minerality and floral notes make it good for blends, says Attis co-founder Robustiano Fariña. Due to the grape’s long ripening cycle, it’s notably sensitive to extreme temperatures, but this also gives it strong terroir, allowing it to absorb the characteristics of the land that make Galician wines unique.

But there remains a marketability problem, Fariña says. The vines are relatively new, so the grapes they produce can be rough, with an unrefined character consumers aren’t used to. 

“These wines from these minority grapes were missing polish,” Fariña says. “Although they’re being expressed in their natural state, these are varieties that will develop and mature very well, but with time.” 

For now, consumers who want an herbal red like Caiño Tinto, Albarello or Galicia’s other minority varieties are more likely to turn to France or Italy, he says. Generally speaking, the market for Spanish reds favors the smoother, fruitier profiles of wines from Ribera del Duero or Rioja. But Fariña is optimistic that this can change. 

“It’s a question of culture and education on the consumer’s part,” he says.

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Wine is in trouble, news reports say. Sales are down across the industry. Vineyards are being ripped out en masse in California, Australia and Bordeaux. Sobriety is hip, and the World Health Organization announced last year that it considered no amount of alcohol consumption safe. At the same time, it seems Gen Z is more slowly warming to wine than previous generations—hard seltzers and marijuana are far more appealing vices. According to Reuters, these winds of change have global wine demand reaching a 27-year low.

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“There’s an emotional cloud that’s hanging over the industry,” says Sam Bogue, the beverage director at San Francisco’s lauded Flour + Water Hospitality Group. “We’re really feeling the pressure—if you look at the data showing up in the news, it’s years of no growth.”

But Bogue, along with many of his peers across winemaking, distribution and importing, is dubious that the end is near. Many reports are frantic and fear-riddled about the future of wine—but are they factual or fear-mongering? Should we actually be freaking out?

Over-Demand, Then Over-Compensation

Despite bleak headlines, the recent BMO Wine Market Report, a wine industry analysis by the major Canadian financial institute, noted that the American wine industry has surpassed $107 billion in sales over 2023—an increase of 46% since 2018. In fact, the report is threaded with cautious optimism: Case sales and volume sales are slumping—particularly with budget bottles—but premiumization persists. In 2023, sales of wines over $10 in grocery stores rose to $4.8 billion, which is 34% more than in 2019. Seventy percent of wineries reported that they expect increased sales growth in the future.

Still, there’s no doubt that the wine industry is in a state of uncertainty. An acute wine oversupply has challenged producers in California and Washington, and the Silicon Valley Bank expects it will linger through the next calendar year. Last year, France spent over 200 million euros destroying a surplus of wine and as a result, thousands of hectares of vines in Bordeaux were ripped out. In California, Allied Grape Growers have called for vineyard plantings to be reduced by 12,000 hectares to help move inventory. And in Australia, millions of vines were destroyed to help rein in overproduction.

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Some industry members argue that there are logical explanations for many of these instances. In Napa Valley, vines are often pulled up as part of their life cycle, not as symptoms of a struggling industry. “It’s not because producers are freaked out—it’s because the vines were plagued with disease or old age,” says Kellie Duckhorn, a Napa veteran and the general manager at Baldacci Family Vineyards.

Bo Barrett, CEO of the historic Chateau Montelena, says he’s seen this fuss before. “Any agricultural school will teach you about these economic cycles,” Barrett claims. “One of the rules of agriculture is that any agricultural commodity that makes any money will always get overplanted.”

“Did people grow too many grapes? Sure. Did they make a little bit too much wine? Sure. That’s a normal agricultural commodity cycle,” he continues. “People forget that this is farming, and these cycles come and go. I’ve seen this seven times before.” That said, he notes this cycle is amplified by the force majeure of recent climatic disasters—the fires of 2017, the light crop of 2022, heat waves and more. The list goes on.

The Pandemic Bubble Bursting

The haze and craze of a global health crisis also made sales numbers ricochet. In 2020 and 2021, stuck-at-home drinkers stocked up. When they were allowed out of their house, they went out and they spent.

“There was this extreme pent-up demand,” says Bogue. “This once-in-a-lifetime blip in sales. It was a massive market—people were purchasing at high volumes. Now? We’re seeing regression; a much-needed correction in the market.”

Many retailers weren’t wise to the fact that the frenzy would end. Now, they’re stuck with excess product purchased when markets were hot. Sales have now returned to normal and the surplus is sitting unsold—the retail equivalent of showing up to the party with magnums when everyone has gone home.

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“Distributors and big-box retailers had a rosy perspective on alcohol consumption,” says Duckhorn. “They bought long, anticipating interest rate hikes. Depending on how inventory was financed, many are recalculating costs to find it’s higher than expected. If you’ve already sunk a ton of capital into inventory, the best way to get that capital back is to sell it at a discount.”

The slump in sales? She finds it's due to overcompensation and overcorrection. “Wine is just moving at a slower tick than what most people anticipated.”

Media Frenzies

But many news stories don’t acknowledge these growing pains. Instead, they point fingers at young drinkers who have yet to embrace wine. “It’s not that people don’t like wine,” says Duckhorn. “It’s more that the industry set expectation benchmarks on unrelated and unrealistic bases, like the pandemic.”

Negativity within the wine media is not new. Sensational headlines sell papers and drive clicks, which keep publications profitable. With these consistently negative reports, “it feels like we’re creating this self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Shilah Salmon, senior vice president of marketing at Jackson Family Wines, a wine conglomerate spanning staples like Kendall-Jackson, La Crema and cult-followed producers like Brewer-Clifton and Lokoya. The group recently implemented an internal campaign focused on debunking headlines and investing into analytics that are more reflective of the positive side of the industry.

“I don’t really know any other industry that likes to tear themselves down like this,” says Salmon. “The concern is: We can chat about these concerns in the trade sphere, but what happens if it gets out to the consumer? They may begin to think that wine isn’t cool.”

Been There, Done That

The drastic numbers make more sense if you contextualize them. In 1960, 62% of Americans consumed alcohol. That number has ebbed and flowed over 80 years. The Mothers Against Drunk Driving campaigns of the 70s and 80s curbed drinking significantly. Then in the 1990s, a 60 Minutes segment on the “French Paradox,” a.k.a. the health benefits of red wine, helped sales recover. By 2023, according to Gallup information, 62% of Americans still consumed alcohol.

Headlines from earlier eras mirror current hand-wringing media reports. Perhaps this sounds familiar: In February 1998, New York Times writer Frank Prial reported that “young people, the 21- to 29-year-olds, are turning away from wine… For the $13-billion-a-year wine industry, the loss of so many potential consumers couldn't come at a worse time." In 2016, similar sentiments played out in The New York Post with the headline, “Millennials are ruining the American wine industry.” Now, Gen Z drinkers are the wine industry’s antagonist du jour.

“Remember when millennials got all this hate?” says Miller, a Gen Z digital assistant account manager at wine communications firm Colangelo & Partners. “I think people tend to think change is trying to ruin the industry. But change is normal. It’s what you need to do to survive and succeed.”

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This need for change extends beyond young drinkers. A recent study by WineGlass Marketing noted that both Gen X (age 44 to 59) and millennials (age 28 to 43) are increasingly looking to connect wine with social, relaxed and casual experiences. “We saw an ongoing thread rejecting the ceremony and precious luxury of wine presentation within this group,” says Susan DeMatei, founder of WineGlass Marketing.

Baldacci has seen consistent sales growth across all categories except one: case sales. So she dug into why. “Here’s another freakonomics thing—no one stores anymore, because everybody’s a renter,” says Duckhorn. She asked her team (“they’re all under 35”) what they wanted from a winery. The answer? Flexibility and smaller units. “They don’t want to buy a case—it’s harder to drink and it’s harder to store.”

So she remains flexible, trying to catch new trends and follow what drinkers, especially younger ones, want. It’s a matter of survival. “We have a lot of wine club members who are over 60, but once they cycle out, there’s no one replacing them,” she says.

Embracing New Faces

In a recent speech at the U.S. Sustainable Winegrowing Summit, Dr. Liz Thach MW pointed out that while the changing generational guard is a hot topic in the industry, the industry hasn’t done much to welcome new drinkers. Wine importer Dale Ott adds that “we’ve been actively antagonistic to younger generations and new demographics for decades.”

According to the Wine Marketing Council, 66% of wine drinkers are white; 11% identify as Black; 15% identify as Hispanic and 5% identify as Asian. If wine sales are down, why aren’t we diversifying who’s drinking?

Ott and her husband founded Nossa Imports to shine a light on lesser-known Portuguese and Mexican wines. “When we started importing Mexican wine, we assumed our Portuguese portfolio would move faster—it’s easier to understand,” she says. While Mexican wine regions are growing in quality and popularity, wine has never fit into the country’s drinking culture—beer and agave spirits reigned. “Thirty years ago, the annual average consumption per person in Mexico was a glass and a half a year,” says Ott. “Now? It’s up to a liter and a half per person.”

“Mexican wine has been one of the biggest surprises of my life,” she says. “The Mexican-American populations are super down with wine—you just need to make space for them.” Recently, they hosted a Mexican wine festival in Phoenix, bringing in DJs and driving Mexican cheeses across the border. The event sold out within minutes. The crowd? Mexicans and Mexican-Americans—people the wine industry has largely ignored.

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Over the last two months, Nossa Imports has expanded to seven more states to keep up with demand, specifically from Mexican-Americans. They’re selling out of inventory, without a single major off-premise retail or grocery store presence.

“You have an industry run by people who have been in the industry forever, and they’ve been catering to the same demographics,” says Jess Druey, a member of Gen Z and founder of Whiny Baby. “There’s not a lot of people at the table who are members of Gen Z or of a diverse background and are decision makers.”

“I’m positive our generation has what it takes to love wine,” says Colangelo & Partners’ Miller. “We love information, travel and experiences and we’re open to new ideas and trying new things.”

A recent McKinsey report dubbed Gen Z the “True Gen,” a generation motivated by individual expression and causes they believe in, specifically sustainability. In step, The IWSR has noticed promise in the growth of “alternative” wines, including natural, sustainable and biodynamic bottles. Natural wine bars are popping up in major metropolises at a speedy clip, offering rainbow pours of orange wines from Georgia, chilled reds from Slovenia or fizzy pét-nats from California crush pads.

“Alternative wines—in a pessimistic wine landscape and under growing economic pressure—continue to offer opportunities for growth,” says Richard Halstead, COO Consumer Research at The IWSR. “The typical consumer audience is younger legal-drinking aged wine drinkers who have positive associations with the segment and are willing to pay for products that align with their needs and values.”

Jenny Lefcourt, a stalwart importer of natural wines, saw sales jump 30% in 2020 and 2021. These numbers flattened after pandemic restrictions were lifted (“there was just too much wine in general,” she says), but the last few years ushered the category into full bloom—sales are again up 20%. She now has distribution across all states and is placing bottles on shelves beyond the buzzy New York boites, including the Hudson Valley, Alabama, Oklahoma and Montana. “I’m really optimistic about the future of wine,” she says.

Looking forward

Flour + Water’s Bogue considers that “maybe we’ll look back on this 20 years from now and reflect on how the market was demanding more thoughtful practices. This is a great moment for us, as an industry, to go back to the drawing board. Things are going to get a little bit worse before they get better, but that’s needed to breed innovation.”

Wine is in a period of growing pains. Living organisms—including grapevines—are engineered to evolve when change is required of them.

Chateau Montelena’s Barrett isn’t worried at all. “There was the craft beer movement 20 years ago. That was definitely going to crush the wine industry. Craft distilleries? Craft tequila? That’s going to crush wine. Sweet fizzy drinks in cans? That was going to crush wine.”

“After those cans are empty they’ll want a nice glass of wine with the dinner,” says Barrett. “We’ll get them in the long run.”

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While periodical cicadas appeared in both 2020 and 2021, this spring marks the first time in over 200 years that two large broods, Brood XIX (known as the Great Southern Brood) and Brood XIII (the Northern Illinois Brood) will pop out of the ground at the same time. Translation? The last time this happened, Thomas Jefferson was president.

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After years of battling invasive insects like Japanese beetles and spotted lanternflies, there are fears that this huge swarm of noisy bugs will create even more chaos for struggling vines in emerging American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in the Eastern United States. Here’s why this influx of winged, burrowing insects could be cause for concern.

A Bug’s Life

Let’s begin with the basics. There are thousands of species of cicadas, though most can be categorized into two groups: annual and periodical. As the name suggests, small and dark annual cicadas appear annually, climbing out of the ground in July and lingering around for the rest of the summer.

Periodical cicadas, on the other hand, crop up periodically. These larger bugs, with bright red eyes and orange legs and wings, dig their way out of the earth every 13 to 17 years. They spend most of their life underground, feeding on sap from tree roots, before ascending from the dirt to shed their shells, ready to mate. Depending on the weather, broods of periodical cicada tend to appear in May and die off by late June.

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Males fly to treetops and let out a lusty, loud chorus by vibrating a membrane (similar to our eardrum) on their undersides to attract a partner. The female periodical cicadas cut into trees and vines, lay their eggs and the very slow life cycle begins again.

While they’re not likely winning any beauty contests, periodical cicadas cannot bite or sting. They’re not poisonous. They litter their shells over sidewalks and fields, but that’s the extent of their impact on humans. It’s more annoying than harmful.

The food chain, however, is heavily impacted. The growth of the cicada population causes a boom of wild turkeys, bats, snakes and birds—animals eager to snack on the young cicadas—alongside caterpillars and other bugs that opportunistically thrive with predators’ attention elsewhere.

What Does This Mean for Vineyards?

Grape growers are also impacted. Once periodical cicadas break through the dirt, they feed on trees and vines—including grapevines. Females lay eggs on budding shoots and trunks, sucking energy the vine needs to usher the grapes to ripeness. Meanwhile, the young feed on the roots, reducing vine vigor. This is why Doug Pfeiffer of the Department of Entomology at Virginia Tech, recommends wrapping vines for the six weeks that periodical cicadas are active.

Winemaker Maya Hood White of Early Mountain Vineyards in Madison, Virginia, has seen moderate cicada damage in the past. But she’s found by draping full canopy nets over the vines, “we don’t need to intervene during large cicada years,” she says. “They are effective in deterring damage from cicadas laying eggs.”

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Other winemakers rely on large-scale chemical control, spraying young vines with insecticides to help remove the eggs. However, “chemical applications are only effective once egg laying has begun,” says Hood White. By that point, bugs will already have damaged the plant. Additionally, Pfeiffer notes that insecticides can be toxic to beneficial species.

The other option requires a bit more foresight: just don’t plant in a “brood” year.

A more unorthodox tack? It may not solve the issue of cicada damage to plants, but the Insects are an increasingly popular protein alternative. Some chefs compare them to soft-shell crab—both have an edible, chewy shell. Ohio State University offers a guide to eating cicadas, while other media outlets have wine-pairing recommendations for the incoming broods. Since it’s supposedly similar in flavor to shellfish, some suggest washing cicadas down with dry white wine. (Here’s a selection handpicked by our tasting experts, if you’d like to try.)

So, Are Winemakers Worried?

On an average year, the bugs rarely venture to major American growing regions and the impact cicadas leave is light. “I’ve been farming here for 52 years,” says Cameron Hosmer, owner of Hosmer Estate Winery on Cayuga Lake. “I’ve yet to see a cicada.” However, as vineyards and winemaking has spread across the United States to areas that aren’t as well-known as, say, Napa or Sonoma, there’s more opportunity for the bugs to impact the industry.

It’s also hard to predict where these bugs have been resting. Remember, some of these cicadas have been dormant under the soil for 17 years. There could be a risk if a large number of periodical cicadas rise from below in a newly planted vineyard.

“In theory, if there was a lot of competition for food sources, cicadas would look for alternatives and we’d end up in a situation where they’re looking at grape vines,” says Andy Fles, vineyard manager at Shady Lane Cellars in Michigan. “And with climate change, who knows what the future looks like.”

About a decade ago, a brood emerged around Shady Lane Cellars, says Fles, but fortunately they mostly fed on trees. Thus far, they have not been “a huge pest,” he adds.

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In Central Virginia, at least, Hood White has also found that periodical cicadas prefer to feast on trees. Two of her vineyards are dotted with younger vines: the rocky mountainside Quaker Run and the rolling hills of Early Mountain. “We have gotten lucky on several occasions with cicadas,” she says. “And I suspect it’s due to both vineyards having surrounding wooded areas—it offers an attractive diversity of growth.”

So, will periodical cicadas impact wineries and wine production across the East and Midwest this year? The answer is maybe—it’s up to location and brood size.

“The only worry is if we get a swarm—they could suck all the carbon out of your vines and do the same type of damage a spotted lantern fly could do,” says Fles. “It’s like sticking in an IV and draining all a vine’s blood.”

Facing Off Against Other Enemies

At the moment, Fles— who makes wine in the picturesque Leelanau Peninsula AVA in the northern part of the Great Lakes State—has larger foes to worry about than the periodical cicada. “Deer are a far bigger threat to young vines,” he says. Fles currently relies on side netting, which are nets kept on the side of vineyards that are unrolled as needed to protect the vines from insects and deer. “The deer treat our vines like a salad bar—they rip off whole shoots,” he says. “Those are future flower clusters, which turn into future grapes.”

There are other invasive species infiltrating vineyards. In Ontario and Quebec, winemakers are battling Japanese beetles. In the United States, the spotted lanternfly, an invasive species of sap-feeding planthopper, has become an increasing concern. Vineyards in Pennsylvania that have experienced lanternfly infestations have lost up to 100% of wine grape crops.

“Spotted lantern flies are huge risk,” says Bruce Murray, owner of Boundary Breaks on Seneca Lake in New York’s Finger Lakes AVA. “We’ve seen heavy infestations in Pennsylvania, New York City and up through the Hudson River Valley. The problem hasn’t hit here yet at all, but it’s a big concern. Cicadas? We’re not thinking about that yet.”

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But just before the Gouais vines met their unfortunate fate, a staff member surfing the World Wide Web (this was the ’90s, after all) stumbled upon the research of Carole Meredith, a grape geneticist and viticulture professor at the University of California, Davis, who was studying the grape. The variety, as she and her team uncovered had a far more fascinating lineage than previously believed. The humble Gouais Blanc was, in fact, the “mother” grape for at least 81 different varieties, including Chardonnay and Gamay.  

In reading about Meredith’s research, Chambers and his team learned that his vineyard contained one of the only commercial plantings of the grape on the planet. The vineyard team contacted Meredith about their vines and she urged them not to destroy the Gouais Blanc. This series of events helped to usher a period of preservation of a variety on the verge of extinction.

An International Effort to Save Gouais Blanc 

That Gouais Blanc’s historical significance was discovered at all is due in large part to international teamwork.  

Late 20^th-century grape genetics were rudimentary compared to today. In the early 1990s, there were no DNA markers available in grapes, says Meredith, referring to the genetic “fingerprinting” that’s common today. So, she formed an international consortium with 20 other researchers across 10 countries to develop a database of markers. “We knew they would become an invaluable tool to develop a better understanding of grapevine biology,” she says. The consortium collected data on over 300 grape cultivars—some of which were nearly extinct, like Gouais—in order to learn the grapes’ parent relationships and genetic makeup. 

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By the late ’90s, the researchers’ collaboration had begun to pay off. They started to see patterns in the varieties’ lineage and were surprised to discover how many grapes shared a common set of parents, in particular Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc.  

“We, like most other grape genetics researchers, had never heard of Gouais Blanc and had included it in our study because it was one of several hundred varieties historically associated with northeastern France,” Meredith says.  

While believed to have originated in Eastern Europe, Gouais plantings were widespread across northeastern France throughout the Middle Ages. The vines were grown on “the mediocre sites, the better sites being reserved for more noble varieties such as Pinot,” reads the 1999 paper Meredith and five other researchers co-authored. Gouais was “a variety considered so mediocre that it was banned (unsuccessfully) at various times in at least two regions and is no longer planted in France,” the paper stated. Even the name Gouais, which derives from the old French adjective “gou,” is a term of disparagement.  

Affectionately nicknamed the “Casanova of Cultivars,” Gouais is the “mother” of Chardonnay and Gamay, most famously, but also to well-known vinifera varieties like Aligoté, Blaufränkisch, Melon de Bourgogne (the grape used for Muscadet), Riesling, Chenin Blanc and Furmint (the variety used in Hungary’s famed Tokaji wines), as well as over 70 more. 

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Gouais’s undesirability could have been due to the grape’s high-yields, susceptibility to botrytis, high acidity and low sugar content, which often resulted in a low-alcohol wine of neutral character. But for such a downtrodden variety, it sure got around. There are over 50 different aliases for Gouais; it’s known as Weisser Heunisch in Germany and Gwäss, in Switzerland, to name a couple. It once populated almost every corner of Europe, from Portugal to Hungary.  

Gouais Blanc Travels to the Southern Hemisphere 

At the turn of the 20th century, Gouais escaped Europe’s borders and traveled to Australia. The vines landed in Rutherglen, a region famed for its fortified wines. Winemaker Stephen Chambers, Bill Chambers’s son and the sixth generation of his family to make wine, believes that his vineyard obtained the Gouais vines from Rutherglen Viticultural Station, a research institute that experimented with recently imported varieties for suitability. “As part of the program they would have wanted a commercial quantity planted,” Chambers says.  

Once Meredith learned of the Aussie plantings in the late ’90s, she asked Bill Chambers to send sample cuttings to California for DNA fingerprinting, which would further the researchers’ studies on the variety.  

Bill Chambers died in December 2023, but, more than 25 years later, the over 120-year-old Gouais Blanc vines are still going strong in Rutherglen. Utilizing mostly original equipment in the 166-year-old winery, Stephen Chambers, who has been at the winemaking helm since 2001, makes both a still and sparkling wine from Gouais. Occasionally, he’ll produce a wine called “The Family,” which blends Gouais with genetically related Riesling and Gewürztraminer. 

As the climate in northeast Victoria warms, Gouais, once known for its neutral aromas and high acid, is making more flavorful wines. 

When Chambers started working with Gouais in the early 2000s, “it was a very late white which tended to retain its acid and was quite austere as a variety,” he says. “Now it has developed some aromatics and ripens closer to the other white varieties we have in the vineyard, albeit at a lower sugar level; even an occasional acid addition is required.” 

A New-World Companion 

The sole commercial Gouais Blanc producer in wine’s “New World” for over a century, Chambers now finds itself in the company of another Gouais producer, Björnson Vineyard, in the Eola-Amity Hills region of Oregon’s Willamette Valley. In 2019, it became the first American producer to grow the variety. 

Björnson Vineyards owner Mark Björnson decided to plant the grape out of curiosity after he read about its history but couldn’t find it in the U.S. “I thought it would be interesting to plant some and produce wine,” he says.  

There’s been a learning curve with the grape. Björnson noticed that Gouais ripens later than Pinot Noir and always has a large crop load. Located in a cooler region than Rutherglen, he sees the prominent acidity inherent to Gouais. “It reminds me of a Muscadet,” he says, referring to the Loire wine made from Melon de Bourgogne, one of Gouais’s offspring. “[It has] floral notes on the nose with bright lemon flavor and a long finish. It goes very well with raw oysters.” 

The winery sold just 60 cases of its first Gouais, released in 2022, which was fermented in concrete egg then finished in neutral oak. It will soon release 75 cases of the 2023 vintage, which is fermented in stainless steel, sometime this year. 

Swiss Champions 

While Americans and Australians may get to taste singular domestic examples of this ancestral variety, back in Europe the variety remains mostly a museum curiosity.  

While a smattering of German producers and one Italian, make minuscule quantities of wine from the variety, almost everywhere except Switzerland has forgotten it. That Gouais still grows in the country—no one knows how much, as it might be a row or block scattered here or there—is thanks to preservation initiatives like VinEsch that are targeting the country’s many historic grape varieties.

José Vouillamoz—a Swiss botanist, grape geneticist, co-author of the book Wine Grapes and mentee of Carole Meredith—is leading those efforts. He has been instrumental in raising awareness of Gouais, which was once a major varietal player in Switzerland before phylloxera decimated Europe’s vines in the mid-19th century. 

In 2009, Vouillamoz, with his winemaker friend Josef-Marie Chanton, organized a “World Summit of Gouais” at a ski resort in the Valais region. In an effort to increase awareness of the variety, they hoped to gather all the known producers of the variety in the world. While half a dozen prominent journalists attended the summit, only five producers were present. Chambers couldn’t make it due to the distance, and only one non-Swiss winery accepted the invitation, the German producer Weingut Georg Breuer. While miniscule in scale, the gathering did reinforce Breuer’s convictions to continue growing Gouais, as well as Chanton’s.  

The co-founder of VinEsch with Vouillamoz, Chanton, who is based in Valais, is one of Switzerland’s main Gouais producers. Production size is still tiny (there were just 1,030 bottles produced in the last vintage), but Chanton’s Gouais boasts “nice aromatics and very high acidity,” Vouillamoz says. 

The Ancestral Search Continues  

Over two decades after the genetic importance of Gouais was discovered, scientists are still uncovering significant details about the grape’s history.  

In 2018, geonomics researcher Anthony Borneman and a team of seven other scientists at the Australian Wine and Research Institute (AWRI) embarked on a search for Gouais’s own parentage. Again, the peasant variety proved full of surprises. 

Pinot Noir, it seems, is both parent and partner to Gouais Blanc. “We sequenced the genome of Chardonnay and compared this to the Pinot and Gouais,” Borneman says. “Rather than the usual pattern you would expect for a parent-offspring trio, the data suggested that some inbreeding had occurred in the Chardonnay family tree.” 

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As more discoveries are made about the ancient variety, some grape geneticists herald Gouais as one of the vinifera varieties well-suited to weather the effects of climate change and even to aid in breeding new, hardier varieties. 

“Gouais Blanc has been through many different climates since the Middle Ages; it most likely existed even before,” says Vouillamoz. “This makes it a candidate variety to be the best genetically equipped to cope with climate change. It is also important to maintain it for future breeding. Since Pinot and Gouais Blanc once gave birth to Chardonnay, deliberate crossings of Pinot with Gouais Blanc would allow breeding of siblings, and maybe one of them will be even better than Chardonnay.” 

The Casanova of Cultivars, it seems, isn’t going anywhere. 

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By the early aughts, she had opened her own wine-importing business, Jenny & Francois, to preach the gospel of these wild, environmentally-conscious bottles.

Twenty years later, she’s largely responsible for igniting the natural wine movement in the United States. Her portfolio reads like a who’s who of organic and biodynamic producers, representing cult-favorites including Gut Oggau in Austria, Domaine Binner in Alsace and Hiyu Wine Farm in Hood River, Oregon.

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But a new law from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has entirely upended Lefcourt’s and many other sustainably-minded wine pros’ business models—and may make it even harder for consumers to determine which bottles and producers share their values. A series of new directives from the agency are shifting the definition of organic wine in the U.S., leaving many longstanding organic winemakers, importers and distributors scrambling to meet stringent new standards.

While these rules were set to protect and better define the term “organic,” many find the requirements confusing, chaotic and overly strict. International vintners are in limbo, unsure if they can continue operating in the U.S. market. Lefcourt feels as if she’s being pushed out of the category she helped form. “It’s devastating,” she says.

Understanding the New USDA Rule

In January of 2023, the USDA announced that it would implement a new range of directives around importing organic products, known as the Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) rule. The focus is on safeguarding the organic supply chain from tip to toe, ensuring accountability and traceability and enforcing organic labeling at every checkpoint.

“USDA’s SOE rule was necessary to better protect organic businesses and consumers,” says a USDA spokesperson. “The rule gives us tools to oversee the supply chain more fully to keep fraud out of the market.”

These new regulations are rigorous. Producers are now required to fill out additional paperwork that many feel is overly arduous, including sending an electronic organic import certificate with every shipment. Every single handler—distributor, broker, packager and beyond—of organic goods must now be certified as USDA organic. That means it’s not just the folks who grow the grapes and turn them into wine that need to be certified organic; it’s the people who bring the bottles into the country and land them at your favorite wine bars.

“We don’t touch the juice. We don’t rebottle it and we’re not farmers,” says Lefcourt. “Why are we required to get certified? It’s incomprehensible.”

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To become certified, importers must self-audit and adopt rigorous traceability practices (tracking the movement, sale, custody and handling of an organic product), submit an application and fees, wait for review, undergo a site inspection, then wait for approval. “We must maintain current records from our certified products and suppliers, identify organic products on shipping orders and bill of ladings in a certain way, maintain fraud protection protocols… the list goes on,” says Jordan Sager, co-president of Winesellers Ltd.

Certification can cost between several hundred to thousands of dollars, depending on the size and complexity of the operation. Additionally, there are annual renewal fees, assessment fees based on annual sales and the cost of annual inspections. (The USDA Organic Certification Cost-Share program offers reimbursement of up to 75%.)

Companies had until March 19 to complete the process, though the USDA representative noted “[we] understand that not all companies will have completed the certification process before the deadline. Therefore, we consider an operation’s progress against that goal before taking enforcement action.”

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What’s Behind These New Rules?

On one hand, the USDA’s attention towards organic produce, a category increasingly wrought with greenwashing, is a bright spot for the industry. It’s an official co-sign on the work of organic producers.

“The new regulations have been received favorably by our winery partners that embrace organic practices: it validates their organic claims,” says Scott Ehrlich, VP of Marketing for Wilson-Daniels. His importing profile includes GAJA, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and biodynamic Loire Valley pioneers Clau de Nell. “For customers that are aware of the new regulations, it provides confidence that organic claims on imported wines have been validated by recognized accrediting organizations; otherwise, the wines would not be allowed to enter the country.”

Natural, organic and biodynamic wines are more popular than ever. “People are willing to pay a premium when it comes to organic produce and food products,” says Matt Dennie, COO at Rumor. But as organic agriculture reaches the mainstream, deceptive advertising has become rampant.

It’s particularly easy to dupe consumers in wine, a category that requires a deep knowledge to navigate confidently. For the average drinker, it’s tough enough to decode the region, varieties and sub-appellations on a bottle, let alone figure out whether the grapes are grown organically or if a bottle is full of additives and mega purple, the sugary grape concentrate that wineries around the world use to enhance the color of their wine.

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In 2020 and 2021, wines with less sugar or lower calories started advertising that they were “cleaner” or “better-for-you”—a paradoxical claim for alcohol, which, health experts warn, is not good for anyone under any circumstances. As a response, in 2022, the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau (TTB) published an announcement stating that “clean” can be used as a taste descriptor, but not a health claim.

The new USDA initiatives are similarly aimed at increasing transparency and curbing the number of producers who claim organic practices, but don’t walk the walk. To be labeled organic, international producers must meet USDA organic regulations. USDA-certified organic wines can contain virtually no additives or sulfites (the European Union allows up to 100 parts per million of sulfites).

Frédéric Brouca, who produces expressive organic wines out of Faugères, France, thinks the rules will make organic rules clearer for drinkers. “I generally think the USDA certification is better for consumers and more in line with the principles of organic farming,” he says. Lefcourt agrees on the benefits of a certification. “I am all for protecting the consumer through stringent rules around organic certifications,” she says. “It’s very important, for clarity’s sake and to avoid fraud.”

Understanding the Upset

So, what’s causing the backlash? While the thinking behind the USDA’s new rules are in the right place—protecting the providence of organically-made wines—they didn’t stick the proverbial landing. The roll-out was fast and left small producers and importers annoyed, jilted and scrambling to understand what’s required of them.

“There was so much confusion early on as to who had to become certified and who qualified for exemptions,” says Sager. He, and many other packaged good importers, thought he was exempt. “We found out through industry chatter and guidance from trade associations that all importers must be certified. Distributors are exempt, unless they also import organic goods directly from producers they represent locally. This had many of us scrambling at the 11th hour to get certified.”

The clarity of the new requirements has been a major issue, mainly because none of the USDA’s resources are specific to the wine industry. There are four categories of USDA organic products: crops, livestock, wild crops and processed products. The last category includes “items that have been handled and packaged (i.e. chopped carrots) or combined, processed and packaged,” like soup, salad or mac and cheese—and wine.

There are 80 pages of documents detailing the new rules on the USDA website. Wine is not mentioned at all. (It doesn’t help that the TTB’s guidelines on wine importing have not been updated since 2010.) It’s a headache to navigate, and “these rules have become impossible,” says Lefcourt. “They’re slowing down my importing and my business because I can’t find the correct information. It’s incredibly confusing, costly and time consuming—it feels like a big money grab.”

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Zev Rovine, who handles a large portfolio of organic and natural producers, has found getting certified was nothing but sending in paperwork and a big check. “I don’t really see anything in the regulations that are designed around transparency or quality control,” he says.

“Over the last five years, we’ve had the French tariffs, lack of containers, the shipping crisis caused by wars, the current state of the economy and the rising price of electricity,” Lefcourt continues. “There are less sommeliers and restaurants are struggling. Then the government adds this enormous, costly burden? It’s unfair.”

Producers are as frustrated as importers. Many have spent time and money meeting the organic requirements in the E.U. Now they have a new list of rules to follow.

To put it into context, consider the wines of Parés Baltà, a leading organic and biodynamic producer based out of Penedes, Spain. The 300-year-old winery has been certified organic since 2002, and certified biodynamic with Demeter since 2012. Their efforts are evident—cover crops bloom between the vines and are pollinated by bees that live in on-site beehives. Sheep dot the vineyards and help fertilize the soil. The operation employs chamomile to regulate nitrogen in the compost and ferment stinging nettles to help crops grow.

None of that is good enough for the USDA. Under these new missives, owner Joan Cuisine must meet new regulations and ask his U.S. importer to do the same.

Mara Ghirardi, the export manager of L’Antica Quercia, an organic winery in Treviso, Italy, has already ensured the winery is fully organic certified. “But our U.S. importers and distributors are not,” he says. “We don’t want to remove our organic labels, so we need our American importers to adapt, and quickly.”

She wishes that the certification process was broken into a few steps to enable a smoother passage to the new regulations. “I think most wine producers are ready for this change, but asking the entire distribution chain to certify all at once is a demanding task,” says Ghirardi. “It requires time.”

What Does This Mean for Your Favorite Organic Bottle?

Many of your favorite organic bottles will be unavailable or in limbo for the foreseeable future, as importers hustle to get their wines re-certified. Lefcourt tried to get as much wine into the country before the rules went into effect, but a month later, she’s still finding the pages difficult to navigate and unclear. But her first newly-certified organic wine, a Chianti, is moving. “I’m hoping it’s correct.”

Parés Baltà is getting ready to send out a test shipment. The company usually has a continuous stream of wine headed to the U.S., but Cuisine is treading carefully; making sure these cases land safely. “It’s time consuming, and requires a lot of bureaucracy,” he says.

Other producers are opting to entirely remove the term organic from the label. Vine Street, a New York-based importer, made the choice to remove any organic terminology from imported wine labels for a year. Lefcourt has also removed the word from many bottles as she learns to navigate the new rules.

Holly Berrigan, who runs MYSA Natural Wine, has chatted with several of her organic producers. They just won’t bother with the certification. “For their size, the cost and paperwork requirements don’t make any sense,” she says.

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Every step of the importation process requires organic certifications, from the invoices and packing lists to the print labels, a costly and time-consuming endeavor for small wineries that already struggle to meet daily tasks. For companies like Dennie’s Rumor, with just one SKU (in his case, an organic rosé), meeting USDA organic requirements isn’t difficult. But for importers who handle hundreds, it’s even more “paperwork on top of a process that is already paperwork heavy,” says Dennie. “It’s unfair to put the burden on international winemakers to become organically certified in this additional American way. It feels punitive. These are family-run businesses—farmers—trying to make great organic products.”

This has led many industry experts to worry this will trigger a backwards shift for the organic wine category. “We have this increased interest in organic wines, but the government is making it more difficult for people to advertise that their products are organic,” says Dennie.

Others echo this sentiment and fear that the rules could even expand the potential for greenwashing by making it more appealing for real organic producers to turn toward other, less meaningful terms. “It’s a huge risk that implementing all of this at once could damage the organic market sector, which should be promoted,” Ghirardi says.

And Berrigan wonders “if the vilification of the word ‘organic’—or the fact that you can get litigated for it is going to push people towards terms like ‘sustainable’ and ‘natural,’ simply because they’re not regulated,” she says.

For Lefcourt, who has spent her entire career campaigning for organic certifications, these new rules present a moral quandary she’s still trying to wrap her head around.

“It’s my life’s work,” she says. “I’ve spent years trying to convince producers to get certified by their government—I thought it was important to be transparent. Now, I’m calling producers asking them to take the certification off the label.”

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The mandate, signed into law last year, is based on decades of scientific research. It goes far further in communicating alcohol-related health risks than any other country has done so far—and is roiling the worldwide alcohol industry. 

“We believe consumers would be best served by a health warning label that is consistent throughout the European Union and accurately reflects scientific data on alcohol and health,” says Dr. Amanda Berger, vice president of science and health at the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS). She points out this new warning label fails to differentiate between moderate and excessive alcohol consumption.

But combined with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recent statement that “when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health” it begs the question: what, exactly, is the correlation between alcohol consumption and cancer? And do these kinds of label warnings actually impact consumer behavior?

Does Alcohol Cause Cancer?

Alcohol has been shown to cause at least seven types of cancer, including the most common types: bowel cancer and female breast cancer. As ethanol (alcohol) breaks down in the body, biological mechanisms induce oxidative stress, which researchers hypothesize interferes with DNA repair mechanisms and may contribute to what some call a “carcinogenic cascade.” Though there are still questions as to why and how exactly it all works, this means that any beverage containing alcohol, regardless of its price and quality, poses a risk of causing cancer. Scientists are ringing alarm bells over this growing body of research.

In late November, the WHO and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released a statement saying that “alcohol causes a substantial burden of cancer.” The two groups cited a study that found that more than 740,000 cancer cases diagnosed in 2020—4.1% of new diagnoses—worldwide were estimated to be caused by alcohol. Nearly a quarter of these global alcohol-related cancer cases were in Europe, which, according to WHO European Region “boasts the highest proportion of drinkers and the highest intake of alcohol in the world.” 

Studies have causally linked oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, colorectum, liver and female breast cancers to alcohol consumption. Because it has been identified as carcinogenic for these cancer sites (among other health issues), the organizations concluded that “no safe amount of alcohol consumption for cancers can be established,” adding that, “the risk starts at low levels and increases substantially the more alcohol is consumed.” 

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Dr. Sylvia Crowder, a member of the Health Outcomes & Behavior Program at Tampa’s Moffitt Cancer Center adds that about 6% of all cancers and 4% of cancer deaths are alcohol related. “We do know that there are real, direct links between alcohol consumption and cancer, regardless of whether it’s red or white wine, beer or spirits,” she says. 

She believes placing warning labels on alcoholic beverages can be a useful tool in increasing consumer awareness of the links between cancer and alcohol. “Just having a blunt statement would be beneficial,” she says. “At the end of the day, it’s about consumers making informed decisions. I think it really comes down to a person’s values.” 

What About These Warning Labels—Do They Even Work?

Though these labels could help make consumers more aware of the risks associated with drinking alcohol, whether the public will change their longstanding drinking habits remains to be seen. One peer-reviewed longitudinal study of more than 6,000 adult smokers found that years after the European Union began requiring tobacco packages to carry health warnings with a picture, text and information on services to stop smoking that covered 65% of the packages, “cognitive and behavioral reactions did not show clear increases.” Put simply, many smokers ignored them.

However, among women who were more highly educated and less addicted, “the effectiveness of warning labels tended to be higher.” Other studies have found similar results regarding changed behaviors among smokers with lower levels of dependence. A 2019 article in the peer-reviewed journal Health Education Research established that with these labels in place “smokers with lower levels of dependence were much less likely to purchase cigarettes.”

And studies on other substances that are generally considered less addictive than nicotine have found that these kinds of labels do influence consumer purchases. 

It may seem like overkill to many Americans. Still, eight Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico, require mandatory nutritional labels that warn consumers of products high in excess sugar, sodium or saturated fat. Studies seem to be showing that these warnings are making a difference in the foods people buy. A paper published in the highly rated, peer-reviewed journal The Lancet demonstrated that “warning labels have consistently influenced most peoples’ purchase decisions in Chile and have proven to effectively reduce sales of products high in calories, sugars, sodium and saturated fats.” Another randomized controlled trial of more than 8,000 Colombians, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, concluded that these nutrient warnings “most discouraged participants from wanting to consume ‘high in’ products.”

Though it’s too early to tell whether these results will extend to alcohol purchases, an online experimental study of more than 6,000 regular beer and wine drinkers found that health-warning labels communicating the increased risk of cancers associated with alcohol consumption “reduced the selection of alcoholic versus non-alcoholic drinks” and text and image warnings were the most effective in doing so.

Will the U.S. Follow Suit?

Berger affirms that the spirits industry is aligned with public health initiatives to reduce alcohol abuse and that encourages adults who choose to drink to do so responsibly. “When it comes to health warnings, DISCUS supports appropriate labeling, which has been required in the United States since 1988,” she says.  

She acknowledges that studies have found that drinking is associated with an increased risk of certain types of cancer, but believes U.S. labeling guidelines that the federal government has established reflect the latest scientific research. “When federal regulators last reviewed proposals to change the required warning label, they found that the current warning is sufficient,” says Berger. “While the current warning has served to remind consumers that consuming alcohol may cause health problems, we defer to the government’s authority to determine warning statements and will adhere to any decision to change the statement.” 

Berger and DISCUS representatives have pushed back against the upcoming Irish labels, claiming they are “inaccurate” and “misleading.” She encourages people to enjoy alcoholic beverages in moderation according to the current USDA guidelines. Those recommendations state that adults of legal drinking age should limit intake to two alcoholic drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less in a day for women. “We urge all adults who choose to consume alcohol to follow the recommendations of the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” Berger adds. 

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According to the 2022, National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 61.2 million Americans ages 12 and up reported binge drinking (four or more drinks for a woman, five or more for men, within about two hours) and 16.1 million reported heavy alcohol use (eight or more drinks per week for women, 15 or more for men) in the previous month.

So, should the U.S. join Ireland in issuing cancer warnings on alcoholic beverages? If it does, it would be a long road of legislation, likely yielding a decision years into the future. Until then, moderation, knowledge–and maybe supplementing more non-alcoholic and low-alcohol alternatives—may be the keys to a healthier lifestyle.  

Crowder, for one, is encouraged to see an uptick in more mindful drinking. “We’re seeing trends now that Gen Z is refraining from drinking alcohol,” she says. “Kombucha and probiotic sodas are good alternatives if you want to have a social outing without alcohol.” 

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The Next Generation

The new generation of Italian winemakers and wine drinkers was out in full force, who breathed fresh air and a palpable electricity into an already lively scene. Gabriella Favara, a prime representative of this youthful wave as she gears up to take the reins of her family’s historic Sicilian winery Donnafugata, was struck by the fair’s youthful energy.

“I think this edition of Vinitaly had even more young protagonists than previous versions, in terms of new generations who are now moving up to lead their family businesses, but also in terms of young wine lovers who are just beginning to approach our world,” she says. “And this combination is really magic: It gives us an opportunity to work in sync, continuously streamlining communication and allows us to tell the story of the products of our unique territories and provoke curiosity.”

That storytelling is critical, Favara stresses, because it means that “young people are able to have a 360-degree experience—from the vineyard to the glass.”

International Appeal

The breadth and depth of representation at Vinitaly also confirmed a suspicion many people in the industry have voiced: Vinitaly is becoming the world’s singularly major international wine event. The shift comes as the once-dominant ProWein enters a waning phase, and the relatively new Wine Paris remains in a building phase. Vinitaly, meanwhile, has established itself as the annual point of reference and cornerstone of international wine commerce and exchange, with 3,700 foreign operators participating this year.

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“For us, [Vinitaly] was rich with opportunities and encounters, especially with international buyers—a fantastic event, thanks also to a refresh we gave to our Lazio pavilion,” says Giovanna Trisorio of Cincinnato, a cooperative of wineries in the Lazio region. “It was important to have this positive feedback after a not particularly exciting ProWein and with other fairs in general having low attendance this year.” Indeed, excitement is already high for next year’s iteration of Vinitaly, which will be held from April 6 to 9 in 2025, again in Verona. It’s not only because of the wine.

“I think that Vinitaly is more than just a fair: it’s a sort of turbine for work, friendship and exchanges in a magical city,” Trisorio emphasizes.

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