REthink Wine Blog

The Major League baseball season has begun, and all is right with the world.  I love baseball.  I know it is no longer America’s favorite past time, but the game holds a special place for me.  Baseball is about nostalgia.  It is about being six years old, and sitting in the stadium with my Zade (grandpa), my Dad, Uncle and cousin and trying to take in all the stimuli overwhelming my senses.  The deep green of the grass.  The height of the pitcher’s mound, the smell of fresh cut grass.  At a baseball game the hot dogs taste better, the beer is colder, the peanuts saltier, the cotton candy sweeter.

Yes, I love baseball, but what does that have to do with wine?  Probably very little, but let me stretch the comparison. The reason I love baseball is that it is an intrical part of my upbringing.  This is the same reason our European cousins give for their love of wine. They remember first sampling the grape at their parents table, and learning about the nuances of wine from their parents.

We all have read about the impact the millenials are having on wine consumption in our country. This demo is adopting wine at a much faster rate than any previous generation.  I submit the reason is nostalgia.  The millenials are the kids of Boomers.  Boomers were the first generation to embrace wine as part of our culture.  I remember as a 19 year old being invited to a friends apartment to have dinner with him and his girlfriend.  She was making spaghetti.  I asked my Dad what wine I should bring (the drinking age was 18 back then). He suggested a bottle of Riunite Lambrusco (because it was Italian).

 Compare that to my millenial age kids.  Our son drinks big cabs, our daughter Pinot Noirs.  They learned about wine at our dinner table.  Actually, many of their friends learned about wine at our
dinner table. Wine has been part of their life for a long time, just as baseball as been part of mine.

As I said, baseball is back, and life is good.  
 

This entry was posted by mitch.schwartz on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Wine Industry Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.