The wine industry loves to talk about tradition.
Tradition in the vineyard. Tradition in the cellar. Tradition at the dinner table. Tradition in what grapes deserve to be taken seriously, what wines belong in expensive bottles, and apparently, what temperature red wine is allowed to be served at.
But sometimes "tradition" is just another word for doing the same shit for too long.
Chillable reds are a perfect example.
For some people in wine, the idea of putting a red bottle in an ice bucket still feels almost offensive. Red wine is supposed to be serious. It is supposed to have structure. It is supposed to sit in a cellar for a decade. It is supposed to be opened with a steak while someone explains the percentage of new French oak.
That world still exists. There is nothing wrong with it.
It just isn't the only world anymore.
And thank God for that.
Maybe the Market Isn't Broken
There has been plenty written lately about everything wrong with the wine business.
Young people aren't drinking enough wine.
Cabernet is struggling.
Tasting rooms are slower.
Inventory is piling up.
Vineyards are being pulled.
The consumer has changed.
All of those things deserve discussion. But the conclusion always seems to be that the market needs to change back.
Back to what?
Maybe the market isn't broken. Maybe it is correcting itself.
For decades, California planted an enormous amount of Cabernet Sauvignon because Cabernet sold. Then we planted more Cabernet because Cabernet sold. Then we planted even more Cabernet because everyone assumed Cabernet would always sell.
And now we're surprised that the next generation doesn't want to drink exactly what the previous generation told them they should?
That isn't the fault of young consumers.
You can't blame the youth for much of anything in wine, let alone for being adventurous.
If previous generations developed relatively vanilla tastes and built an industry around them, that's on us—not the 28-year-old ordering chilled Counoise at a wine bar.
The younger drinker didn't plant too much Cabernet.
They just inherited it.
The Most Interesting Wine Market We've Had in Years
I actually think this is an incredible moment for wine.
Maybe one of the most exciting we've had in decades.
Because consumers are willing to take chances.
They're drinking grapes they can't pronounce. They're drinking skin-contact whites, pét-nats, chillable reds, field blends and wines from regions they previously would have walked straight past.
They're interested in texture and energy and acidity. They're interested in farming. They're interested in who actually made the wine and where the grapes actually came from.
They're championing the esoteric.
And increasingly, they're willing to reward people for innovation.
That should be celebrated.
Wine desperately needs curiosity.
The industry spent decades teaching people that knowledge meant knowing the rules. Maybe the next generation is showing us that knowledge can also mean knowing when the rules aren't particularly useful anymore.
So What Exactly Is a Chillable Red?
It isn't complicated.
A chillable red is simply a red wine built to remain vibrant and expressive at a cooler serving temperature.
Usually that means bright acidity, fresh fruit, moderate alcohol and less reliance on extraction, tannin and oak for personality.
For me, the important part isn't the category. It's the intention.
I want freshness.
I want energy.
I want something you can pull out of the refrigerator, throw on a table with some friends and watch disappear.
That doesn't make it unserious wine.
Making something joyful is a serious pursuit.
The irony is that many chillable reds actually bring wine closer to the agricultural product it claims to be. When you remove some of the makeup—the excessive extraction, oak, alcohol and manipulation—you have fewer places to hide.
Fruit matters.
Farming matters.
Acid matters.
Place matters.
And the decisions made in the cellar become incredibly obvious.
I Make What I Want to Drink
I've never been particularly interested in making wine based on what a marketing report says consumers are supposed to want.
I make what I want to drink.
Maybe that's part of the reason our company is still growing.
We aren't trying to reverse engineer authenticity.
We aren't chasing a demographic and then designing a wine to capture it.
We're making wines we genuinely want on our own table and trusting that there are other people out there who feel the same way.
Sometimes that means Cabernet Sauvignon.
Sometimes it means Albariño fermented on its skins.
Sometimes it means whole-cluster reds with lower alcohol and bright acidity.
Sometimes it means putting the damn red wine in the refrigerator.
The common thread isn't style.
It's identity.
You Can't Manufacture Identity
Consumers are smarter than this industry sometimes gives them credit for.
They recognize honesty.
Maybe they can't explain every technical detail of a fermentation. Maybe they don't know every AVA or soil series. They don't need to.
People have an incredible ability to recognize when something has a point of view.
They can also recognize when something was created in a conference room.
Honesty in sourcing and identity is increasingly valuable because so much of the world around us feels manufactured.
Tell people where the grapes came from.
Tell them how the wine was made.
Tell them who made it.
Then let them decide whether they like it.
We don't need to convince another generation that there is a correct way to enjoy wine.
We need to give them something worth being curious about.
The Correction Might Be the Best Thing That Happens to Wine
There probably is a serious correction coming to the wine industry.
Maybe we're already living through it.
Some vineyards will be replanted. Some brands will disappear. Some categories will shrink. Some assumptions that looked permanent twenty years ago will turn out to have simply been trends with very long lifespans.
That's painful.
But demise is often the precursor to progress.
What replaces the old system could be far more interesting.
More varieties.
More farming.
More transparency.
More experimentation.
More personality.
More wines that don't taste like they were designed by committee.
And hopefully a lot less time spent complaining that younger generations aren't drinking wine correctly.
They're drinking.
They're exploring.
They're taking chances.
They're just deciding for themselves what deserves their attention.
Maybe instead of blaming them, the wine industry should start paying attention.
Because the future of wine probably isn't sitting in a cellar waiting for the world to go back to the way things were.
It's already in the ice bucket.