My name is Keith Beavers and we just hooked up a karaoke machine in the house.What day is it?What month is it?Is it still 2024?I've been doing nothing but karaoke.What's going on wine lovers from the Vine Pair Podcasting Network?
This is the Wine 101 podcast. My name is Keith Beavers and I am the Tastings Director of Vine Parable.Today, I'm taking a break from the norm.I want to do a vibe check.We've been doing a lot of history.What about now?I want to get into it.
Let's get into it. You know, here at Wine 101, the goal has always been to educate the public on wine.Not to tell you what to do, but to tell you how to do it.
Give you the tools you need to help you make your own decisions on your journey of enjoying wine.And actually, that's been the entire goal of Vine Pair this past 10 years, we're 10 years old this year.
And from talking about spirits to talking about beer, cocktails, wine, it's always been about the culture.That's why our motto is drinking is culture.
We have Cocktail College hosted by Tim McCurdy, which goes deep into the history and the current status of famous cocktails, being talked about by some of the most professional people in that industry.
We have the vine pair podcast, which is a podcast that every week puts its thumb on the pulse of what's going on and basically dissects it, puts it back together to give you an idea of what's happening.
And with the vine pair podcast, you actually get to listen to the CEO and the editor in chief, along with a West coast voice in Zach Jabal from Seattle. And they also get very real about what's happening in the industry.
We also have Tap Lines by Dave Infante, who's a contributing editor.He does this podcast about the history of beer, focusing primarily on the history of American beer, talking to historians of the industry.
Basically, what I'm saying is we are extremely tuned in to what is going on in the drink space in the United States and globally.And I know that wine 101 is not really about telling you what to do, but in this episode,
I want to talk about how we, where we are right now, the vibe check.I want to vibe check our industry and who we are as a drinking culture and where we're going next because it's extremely exciting.
We have the world opened up to us and I'll tell you why.And I'm not going to tell you what to do because I'm just, As somebody in wine, I love wine so much.I love American wine.I love wine all over the world.And I want everyone to just enjoy wine.
And I know that I have listeners. all over the world, and I am going to speak to that as well, but the United States is one of, and has become, according to the Oxford Wine Companion, one of the most important importers of wine in the world.
We are the fourth largest producing wine country behind Italy and France, and I believe Spain, which is wild because we're only 248 years old. That's not that old, but we have become a country that has driven trends.
In the Oxford Wine Companion, there's an entry in, I think it's the United States entry.And it says this, the fattishness of the American marketplace has winemakers constantly looking out for the new trend. And that's who we are.That's how we roll.
And that's great because we are, we are young.And there's another great quote in the Oxford Wine Companion from the intro to the California entry.It says this.
That the US was not historically a nation of wine drinkers has tended to exaggerate the cycle of giant strides and general retreats and even relatively recent events can fast become history.So we're a youthful nation that are prone to trends
and wine, because we're talking about wine here.I'm sure it happens in everything else.And those trends can make history.And our trends are not exclusive to domestic wine.Our trends can be domestic wine based.
They can also be trends that are coming from Europe, whether it's Bordeaux, Barolo, Chianti.There are people that I talked to that used to sell wine in the streets of New York in the 1980s and could not sell a Barolo to save their life.
Couldn't sell an Amarone or a Bordeaux to save their life.Couldn't even sell a Burgundy This was a time when people in the United States in the 70s and 80s were actually really getting into wine.We just didn't have the knowledge yet.
I mean, whatever trends or fads that we had in wine before Prohibition don't even really matter because the damage that Prohibition did to the industry is so great that when it had to be rebuilt, it literally was a phoenix rising from literal ashes.
So the trends that I'm talking about mostly are from Prohibition on.And it wasn't until 1968, according to everything that I researched, that Americans generally started really getting into what was called dry red wine.
There was a long time where Americans were drinking the sweet red wines from Prohibition, but that began to change.And our trends really started happening in the 1970s when we saw the judgment of Paris.
And it's our media that kind of guided us through these things.And it started with the Time Magazine article. written by George Tabor, the only journalist that actually went to this event.It wasn't really a judgment.
I have a whole Judgment of Paris episode if you want to check it out, but it was more just a blind tasting.But the way it was written in Time Magazine made it out as an event, and Americans took notice of this, and this kind of began
all of it, when modern trends in American wine, where that's concerned.And that was the 1976 judgment of Paris, when we as a country decided that we won this contest between the French and the Americans.
And that was the catalyst for the energy that would eventually become creating what we have now called AVAs, American American Videocultural Areas.Missouri became the first and then Napa became the second in 1981.
And that right there was the next big thing.And this, this is a moment where we begin kind of sketching out our, I don't know, we created a cauldron here.
of future trends because it all bubbles up from California, but then it kind of spreads and we go into all different directions.And from the 1980s until the 1990s, 100 American viticultural areas were awarded to the United States.
So there was a big, that's what we do.You know, Oh, you want to do that?Let's do it.Well, let's do a lot of it.So we did that.The next big thing was in the 1990s. From the late 80s into the early 90s, there was a term called the French Paradox.
And I love the way Jancis Robinson, the Jedi Winemaster, says it.
She says it was a term coined in the United States in 1991 to express the infuriating fact that the French seem to eat and drink themselves silly with no apparent ill effects on their coronary health.
The media picked up on this and in 1991, or was it 92, there was a report on 60 Minutes about the French paradox.And it was a moment in American wine drinking history when we started to talk about the health benefits of drinking red wine.
Not a good idea.Wine is alcohol.It's not healthy, but this is kind of where it began.
The major headline was that consumption of red wine is a possible factor in reducing the risk of heart disease, which is kind of ridiculous without telling people to drink in moderation or anything.So that wasn't, that was, that was interesting.
And it got so popular.This, this was such a major moment in American wine culture that Gallo, actually had to quadruple their production.And their leading generic brand, they called it Hardy Burgundy, had to be allocated.Allocated.
A word used for wines that are only sold to certain accounts.And actually the Gallo brothers created allocation.It was one of their salesman's ideas. to allocate wine, and we do allocations these days because of that.
It's all in the book, the amazing book, Gallo Be Thy Name.Check it out.But this is also a moment where the United States and our drinking culture were introduced to two new varieties, Merlot and Riesling.
Now we'd been into Merlot for a little while, but we'd kind of gotten out of that because when, when the reason why there's a Merlot quote that's so famous from the 2004 movie sideways is because we had kind of gotten a little bit too much on the Merlot.
We had gotten tired of Cabernet Sauvignon.So Merlot became the, the, all the rage and then people started making a lot of it and then the quality went down and then people started not wanting Merlot anymore.
But then after the 1991 or 92, 60 minute thesis, Washington State, which had only become a, well, Washington State got its first American viticultural area in 1983 in the Yakima Valley, which is in the Columbia Valley AVA now.
It is now the second largest wine producing state behind California.At the time it wasn't in the nineties, but this was the moment when Washington State arrived.
And because of the Pacific Northwest, because of that particular climate, Riesling really did well up there, and so did Merlot.So Merlot and Riesling started having a moment because of this whole thing.
For some reason, there was a connection between the French paradox, 60-minute thesis, and Washington State.I think it's a marketing thing.They really ramped it up.They saw their opportunity and they went for it.
and today Washington State is what it is.
Not because of that, it was because of a lot of winemakers doing a really amazing work, but this in the global, I mean the global, in the sort of like, in the American consciousness, Washington State had arrived.
Now around this time, a guy named Robert Parker had started a pamphlet called the wine advocate and he gradually became the wine critic of the United States.We did not have anyone to guide us anywhere.
Dude came along, created the 100 point system based on the American educational system, which is brilliant because that's how we, I mean, we can think about it.It's, we can actually have, we can actually wrap our minds around that.
And when he began applying this Americanized point system to European wine, we started really getting into European wine.This is really when Bordeaux came on board.And Robert Parker tended to like big full-bodied wines.
So California wine he liked, Bordeaux he liked.There was a moment actually where he, the Rhone I think he really liked.
There was a moment when he went to Burgundy and it was a disaster because the wines of Burgundy around that time and still to this day, they don't have the power.And I'm not really sure why it was a disaster.It doesn't really matter.What matters is,
his influence over wine around the world, specifically Europe, I should say, was a big deal.And this is a moment, and in Italy too, and this is a moment when wines in Europe became a little bit more
opaque bigger fuller bodied because of They wanted to get scores from Robert Parker to be part of the American marketplace and this trend of big full-bodied wines was realized in the 90s and Can be attributed to in California a winemaker named Heidi Barrett.
She's often called the first lady of wine It doesn't make a lot of sense but also the queen of cult cabs.This is the cult cab era that would have a lasting impact on the palates of American wine drinkers.
Just to give you a sense of Robert Parker's palate and Heidi Barrett's skill, she has made five wines that Robert Parker has given 100 points to within her career.That's a lot.That's like getting Michelin stars for restaurants.
The original idea behind these wines is they were low yielding, powerful oak exposure and high alcohol.I'm like talking 15%, not the normal 14.5 or something like Cabernet Sauvignon.If you've ever heard of Screaming Eagle, this is from that era.
And in the opening scene of the book, The House of Mondavi, which is just the history of the Mondavi family.There's this moment where Robert Mondavi, who did a bunch of really important work with other winemakers to make Napa what it is today.
He was driving around on his property on a golf cart because he had this annual auction every year. And he had it because his wines were always the wines that were primarily being auctioned, but he was getting up there in age.He was getting older.
He had had a long legacy and he was driving around the auction and he was watching how his wines were not being bidded on as much as these quote unquote cult cabs were.
And he was witnessing right there in the beginning of this book, he was witnessing a change in American wine culture. towards big, full-bodied red wines.And in many ways, we are still in that trend.That trend has not died away.
We now have a category called red blends, which is basically the lasting preference of wines that are this big and opulent.I mean, those wines, cult cabs are still around, but we don't really use the term cult cab anymore.
But from the 90s all the way, well actually the entire decade of the 90s, that the cult cab scene was the scene.
But just like everything in American culture, our trends either die or go to the back burner because we overwhelm ourselves with the one thing that we really love so much.
And getting towards the early aughts, there are a couple things that we were concerned about.Number one, people are getting a little bit tired of the big full-bodied red wines.
This happened back when Cabernet Sauvignon was being too much and when people went to Merlot.This is happening again. This is also a time when the need to change the way we approach our agriculture on a global level hit a critical point.
It is a, a, a movement that has been, that would have been growing in Europe since world war one ended in world war two.And it, It fed itself on the fringes for so long and eventually made its way to California.
And this is where we started thinking about organics.I don't know if you guys really remember this, but the green movement was huge.I mean, there was a moment where everything was going green.Remember my father who had not retired yet.
was kind of close to retirement and he was having these meetings that he didn't understand.He's like, wait, what are we talking about green?We had to build it.How do we, what do we green?What, what, what are we doing?
We're how we were building this building a different way.I remember that happening.And I also remember,
While on the today show the peacock that was always kind of the logo that was always in the right lower right-hand corner of the of the screen for like a year it was green and that's how much we were into Green we wanted everything to be better for us our environment We put in our bodies the air we breathe all of it and wine was part of that now
And this is a time in wine where we created the organic certifications.Europe had recreated them and then it was our turn.So that's when we started doing that.The organic movement was huge.
And that's when I opened the wine shop and I was buying and I was into, and I was watching, this is like 2006, 2007. I was like, yeah, organic wine, it makes complete sense.And there's a certification for it.
And there's a, there's a, there's a rigorous sort of like thing that you have to do and it takes a while to make it happen.And it's like, wow, okay, this is really cool.You guys are serious about great agriculture.Okay.This is awesome.
Around that same time, there was this old idea from Europe in the 19, in the 19 teens called biodynamics, which was proposed by a guy named Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher.
The organic wine movement naturally morphed into the biodynamic movement.You know, it didn't morph. It was layered on top, let's say that, because organics was such a good thing for the wine industry.It really put a lot of people in check.
It's a little negative.It didn't put people in check, but it really made people think, okay, we have to change everything we're doing here.We've got to be better for the environment, the animals, the humans, and all this.
And biodynamics took that just one step further.The thing is, there was no certification for biodynamics. So it's a little bit like, what are we doing here?Is this a little bit weird?I don't know.Why are we bearing horns and what are we doing?
And then in 2010, a certification called the Demeter certification actually was created.And now we had two sort of sustainable agriculture. role certifications.You could be organic and you could be biodynamic.
You could be organic certified and Demeter certified or one or the other.And this was an exciting time because the millennial generation was coming into their drinking age.
Now, also happening at this time was something called the IPOB, in pursuit of balance.
This was a movement by wine personalities, Psalms and winemakers in California, trying to get people to understand that wine was not just big, full-bodied, high-alcohol red wines, but there was this thing called acidity, and wines could be very high-toned and still be delicious.
it was a very important movement to where we were going to go.In almost the exact moment, the green movement began.So they entered into the wine world with organic wine and biodynamic wine.Now this is the thing, with these two ideas,
We're not just talking about American wine now.Now we're talking about wine from all over the world.And the millennial generation was, what's the word? Hungry, they were voracious for wine that was good for the planet.
And they wanted to try all of it.And the thing about Bordeaux and Burgundy and Champagne is those wines already had their moment.Robert Parker and all that era, they brought the fine wine regions of the world to the United States.
and gave them permission to, you know, be distributed throughout the country, people that sought them out.But this was more of like, we want to try organic biodynamic wines from wherever they come from.
And this is a moment when I opened my wine shop this whole time.And this was a very exciting time in American wine drinking culture because the exploratory nature of the millennial generation
is one of the most exploratory generations for wine in the history of the United States, well, since Prohibition ended.I mean, this is the generation that just went for it.
And I had a blast, by the way, because I'm Gen X, I'm older than these people, but I had a blast selling wine to the millennial generation because it was a very stimulating time. everybody wanted to drink wine.
And people started being okay with spending a little bit more.
Now the recession happened and it messed some things up, but when it, when the recession was kind of like a little bit kind of out of our world, we started seeing people like, you know what, 20 bucks, I'll spend 20 bucks on a bottle of wine, just as long as it's organic or biodynamic.
That's kind of what it was.And that began a very exploratory moment in our wine drinking culture. Now, in the 90s, there was this resurgence in Paris of this idea of making wine. without the addition of something called SO2, sulfur dioxide.
It's a component that actually helps wine retain color.It actually protects wine from bacteria, all these things like spoilages and all that.There was a guy in the 1960s named Jus Chevaux who decided he wanted to try to make wine.
He was a scientist and a winemaker.He wanted to try to make wine. without this thing.And he did it.It was successful.
And from there, years later, there are four winemakers called the Gang of Four who actually started doing the same thing that Jules Chaveau was doing in the 1960s.And it created this sort of small little sub-genre, if you will, of wine.
And I don't know if they were calling it natural wine back then, but these wines were making it to the cool bistros and wine bars in Paris and people were drinking these wines and it was, it was fun.This idea arrived in the United States.
And I remember the first quote unquote natural wine that was brought to me for potential purchase at my restaurant. And I was like, okay, this is completely different.This is not organic.This is not biodynamic.
This is a wine that has these very kind of off flavors.It's almost like it's more oxidized than it should be.It's sour.It has a sharpness to it.There's a kind of a tingle on the palate, like it's gone through some very minimal second fermentation.
I'm not really sure what grape this is made from because of all these flavors that are kind of intruding upon what I would think would be the white wine grape that I should be tasting.And it boggled my mind.This is, I think, in 2013 or 14.
And what I didn't realize at the time, is we were about to enter into a new phase, a new era, a new fad, a new trend.It was going to be called natural wine and it was going to take the country by storm.
And looking back on it, it kind of made sense to move into a term, a wine that had this term connected to it.It wasn't like Colt Cab, Natural wine, quote unquote, you guys know I don't like that term. is a style of wine.Like cult cab is a style.
High oak, high alcohol, opulent.Natural wine was a style.It was, doesn't matter what grape you're using, it has to taste like these things.It has to be a little bit sour.It has to like, you know, have some VA on it.It has to have some brett.
That was a style.Organic wine was not a style.It was a movement, a certification.Biodynamics was that as well.This was completely different. And just like Time Magazine in the 1970s, just like 60 Minutes in the 1990s, social media was our
information transfer for what would become the natural wine movement.And because of social medias everywhere all the time, where you don't, you know, used to have to go home and watch TV.
Now you got it all on your phone because of that, this thing called natural wine lasted from, I think when I started in just hearing about it in 2013 until now, right now, I mean, I believe the pandemic,
Basically put a pause on every trend so when the pandemic came when people started coming out of the pandemic You know natural wine was still there.So people started clinging to it Right now and towards the end of 2024.
We're going to the fall of 2024 now and the term natural wine is not being used as much and it's starting to become a category that's shrinking, that's being put into like, it's like, there's natural wine over there and then here's everything else.
Now, if you've noticed, since I've been talking, we have just been moving into these trends and it's been very kind of gradual, very easy.Like we morph into this, we go into that, we go into that.But this is why right now is so exciting.
Now that natural wine is not dominating the headlines in our market, natural wine has now become just part of wine.It's not the thing.And if people continue to make natural wine, okay, great.Now natural wine is just part of the whole wine thing.
And what's really wild about this, wine lovers, is in 2025, there is no real trend we're moving into.It's just sort of the end of natural wine.So what's next?We still have cult cabs.We still have Merlot and Riesling from Washington State.
Mondavi still makes wine.We have natural wines.We have biodynamic wines.We have organic wines.It's all still here. And I don't know if it's going anywhere, but what I feel is the new trend that we are moving into.
And I'm not really sure about this, but I want to put this in on this podcast is I want to, I want to start having a conversation and just start kind of observing what happens next because wine one-on-one is about wine history as well as it is about science and how just understanding and enjoying wine.
So here's the vibe check. Here's what I'm seeing, because at Vinepair, we are in it, wine lovers.We are in it every single day.We see things, we watch movements.
And what's very exciting right now is we are witnessing a new generation of winemakers in the United States and in Europe.
In Europe, it's been happening for a little while now because a lot of stuff in Europe is about handing down to generations and we're starting to see new winemakers in, in Europe with just new ways of thinking about wine.But in the United States,
We're in a place where we're celebrating things we once shunned.We're seeing Virginia wine become a player on the national stage and the world stage where we had a Bordeaux, Bordeaux just invested in Virginia wine.
We're seeing people bringing, coming back to the idea of hybrids.I wanna do an episode on hybrids because they're so popular right now and people are making great wine from them.What's happening is we're seeing
people kind of going out there and going, what do we have to work with?And a lot of this comes from small business ownership, working with what they can afford.
And instead of making quote unquote natural wine with what they can find and just putting Britannia Mises on it and saying this is natural wine, they're making wine that's absolutely delicious.And that can actually,
A group of people can enjoy, more palates than not, can enjoy these wines.We're seeing young winemakers work with grapes that wine didn't really use back in the day.
Grapes that have been sitting there in California for so long and haven't gotten the love they deserve.We're seeing people co-ferment hybrids with vinus vinifera.We're seeing people co-fermenting wine grapes with cider apples.
We're seeing people making classic Cabernet Sauvignon that would blow the minds off of people before the cult cab movement.We're seeing classic wine being made in Napa, but structured and beautiful.This new generation is taking wine to a new level.
balance to a lot of things that were out of balance for a while and that is concepts perceptions and realities where we're actually at a time where The millennial generation got to explore all these different wines around the world and here We're in a moment where we are also able to do that going forward We have organics
We have biodynamics.If you like natural wine, it's going nowhere.That's going to be there.But we have now this new generation of winemakers to actually enjoy.And it's not just the new cool wines that are made in wild different ways.
It's also the classic stuff that is still beautiful.There are wineries in Europe where there's new youthful energy in these old, old like Chianti companies that are just really
Revitalizing the way wines are are made and it's an absolutely amazing moment And I'm in it looks like you know, we're talking about 2025 and beyond that's where we seem to be going I don't know where it is yet, but I wanted to you know, I wanted to have a just have a moment to talk about where we were because it's fascinating to me and
And it's wild that, you know, the social media is now our media.It's now how we define, define our trends.And I'm really curious to see how it goes, but I'm really excited to just drink good wine, just drink good wine.
And that's, what's all about the journey.That's what your journey is about.Just drink wine, drink all of it.If you like it.
Awesome, take a photo of it, figure out where it's from, go to Wine 101, listen to that episode about that, get more knowledge on that.If it's something you don't like, be honest with yourself and just say, look, this is just not my thing.
It's totally cool.It could be anything from natural wine to Beaujolais to Chianti.It doesn't matter.If it's not your preference, it's not your preference and that's okay.
I just feel like we're about to get into this really cool realm, this really cool era of exploring wine.And I've talked for way too long because Wine 101 is not usually this long, but this is the vibe check.
Next week, I think we're going to talk about hybrids.Now I'm excited about talking about hybrids.Let's talk about next week.Talk to you guys next week. VinePearKeith is my Insta.Rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts from.
It really helps get the word out there.And now for some totally awesome credits.Wine 101 was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePear headquarters in New York City.
I want to give a big old shout out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Mallon for creating Vinepair.And I mean, big shout out to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of Vinepair for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast.
Also Darby Seaside for the theme song.Listen to this.And I want to thank the entire Vinepair staff for helping me learn something new every day.See you next week.
