The soda pop industry in America is worth $318.5 billion annually. Counting these spoof wines as part of the grand sales total, “I could see the total industry amount being more like $500 million annually,” McCarroll says.Ī half billion dollars both is and is not a lot of money. Natural wine, with its unregulated ethos, is particularly vulnerable to such malarkey-see, for example, the pastel floral art motifs of the Gia Coppola line of wines from The Family Coppola, whose bottles very much look like something you’d find in a natural wine shop. ![]() John McCarroll, the London School of Economics and Political Science–educated wine seller, podcaster, and journalist, argues that the natural wine industry’s influence is even bigger if including “spoofs,” lingo for wines that have been made using less-than-natural means yet are packaged to appear as part of the natural wine trend. Zev Rovine, founder of the influential and eponymous natural wine importer Zev Rovine Selections, says the company boasts sales figures of $10 million annually-roughly 60 times what the company sold when he launched it in 2008. Sales at influential natural wine importer Jenny & François Selections have tripled since 2017, according to cofounder Jenny Lefcourt. But in conversations with some of the industry’s leading importers, it’s clear that the growing cultural cachet of natural wine is more than just Instagram posts and magazine mentions. There is no International Natural Wine Council, or global quorum of agreed-upon norms that a winemaker must follow to be considered “natural.” The movement’s growth is challenging to track precisely because its definition is unclear. There are meme accounts galore, which speaks to the moment we’re presently in for natural wine: It feels like this stuff is everywhere right now, in Los Angeles and New York City, sure, but also Kansas City, Tacoma, Milwaukee, Waco, small-town Vermont, and small-town Hudson Valley. It’s understood as something like a cultural drinking “ movement.” I poked fun at the monikers of that “movement” above, but I’m certainly not the only one. You’re likely to find an Austrian producer called Meinklang, whose labels feature a cartoon cow, or perhaps Field Recordings, a California producer whose labels resemble a subway advertising poster. There’s an increasingly ubiquitous representation of the same 20 or so bottles from a handful of producers on every wine list and bottle shop shelf. ![]() Even a few short years ago, natural wine was something like a niche beverage subculture, and a signifier of quirk and idiosyncrasy for the establishments that catered to it.īut today it looks more and more like an aesthetic drinking trend driven by the pictures on the labels, with Instagram likes in place of traditional point scores. Natural wine’s roots are in the work of doggedly independent, small production winemakers working largely without the inclusion of additives commercialization and financial dividend have traditionally barely entered the picture. These sales trends mean less than zero to the realm of natural wine-an amorphous, rather intentionally undefinable category that has been woefully underserved by business reporting and sales trends, despite its growing cultural primacy. But…haven’t I scrolled past this meme before? One cannot duck into an old favorite bar in Los Angeles these days, the sort of pubby-clubby place where one might order a beer and a shot, without being confronted by a new menu subsection designated in bold font, with extra exclamation points: NATURAL WINE!!! You might ask the bartender to tell you more, as I did-when did these wines join the menu? Was there one to recommend? ![]() Is it starting to feel like the same conversation is being had about wine right now, over and over again? Natural wine culture in America is ascendent, remaking the way a generation drinks and sells wine in a meaningful way. Was it the sparkling piquette or the sparkling pét-nat or the one with the cartoon animal on the label-a bear, I think, or some other large hulking beast, no doubt? It featured pastel pinks and smokey oranges, to match the utterly natural wine within, made from a grape you’ve never heard of, in a bar with throbbing music on vintage speakers and a lot of Throwing Fits–looking dudes standing around, holding their stemware from the base and checking their phones. Are you familiar with the phenomenon of déjà vin? It is the profound and inexplicable certainty that you keep seeing the same bottles of wine everywhere you go, in every little Instagrammy bar and bistro in America.ĭidn’t we drink this bottle at The Glou Factory, no wait, was it Glou Glou, or Glou Bar, or Natural Inclinations, or I think with your friends at Stuck Like Glou (from the people behind Huffing Glou), which is next to Maisøn de Tinned Fish-I get them all confused.
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