How Wine Can Get Its Swagger Back: Terroir > Wine Brands

Dear Wine Industry,

I read Mark Brown. I listen to Vinepair. The same story plays on repeat: wine has a big problem. Sales are down, interest is waning, and younger generations aren't engaging. Craft beer drinkers, who should have migrated into wine, didn't. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

The American approach to wine is broken. Instead of leaning into what makes wine unique -- its deep connection to place -- we leaned into celebrity endorsements, flashy labels, and heavily manipulated wines. We handed the narrative to marketing teams. Now consumers, especially younger ones, are moving toward craft cocktails and non-alcoholic options that feel more honest and more accessible.

But the solution is not out of reach. We can reverse this by embracing what makes wine genuinely special: terroir.

The Solution: Terroir Over People

The best wines in the world aren't defined by their branding or even their winemakers. They're defined by where they come from. Great wine begins with great terroir, the unique interplay of soil, climate, and geography that gives a wine its soul. From the cobblestones of the Rocks District in Washington State to the limestone slopes of Burgundy, terroir is what makes wine unlike any other beverage.

Yet as an industry, we've moved away from this. We've become obsessed with creating wine brands instead of celebrating wine's inherent connection to the land. The result is a market full of consumers who feel uninspired and an industry that's paying for it. US wine volume sales declined for the third straight year in 2023. That's not bad luck. That's the consequence of two decades of brand-over-place thinking.

Training: The Missing Link

Focusing on terroir is only the first step. If we want to reclaim wine's relevance, we need to do more than talk about it internally. We need to train the people who actually interact with consumers to communicate it well.

I don't mean training celebrity spokespeople or creating consumer-facing ad campaigns. That ship sailed and it was a mistake.

The focus needs to be on the front line: on-premise and off-premise staff. Restaurants, retailers, and distributors are the gatekeepers of the wine experience. They're the ones who talk to consumers face to face. Equip them with the knowledge and the language to speak about terroir in a way that's meaningful and accessible, and you start rebuilding trust.

A well-trained server or sommelier can connect a diner to a bottle's story in two sentences. That's all it takes. Not a lecture. Not a credential. Two sentences about why this wine tastes the way it does and where that character comes from. That's the conversation that makes wine stick.

A Local Example: The Rocks District

Recently, I gifted clients a bottle from the Rocks District of Milton-Freewater, one of the most terroir-driven AVAs in the country. The cobblestone soils there were deposited by the Missoula Floods roughly 15,000 years ago. Those stones absorb heat during the day and release it at night, pushing phenolic ripeness in ways you can taste. The bottle was 'Some Days Are Stones' by Two Vintners. Morgan is an exceptional winemaker, but it's the terroir and his respect for it that elevates the wine.

That's a two-minute story. Any server can tell it. And when they do, the guest remembers it.

The Shift We Need

The best wine brands aren't brands at all. They're custodians. As an industry, we need to prioritize education and storytelling around place, not personalities or trends. Consumers are far more likely to develop loyalty to a wine that connects them to somewhere real than to a label that hired the right agency.

A Call to Action

The US wine industry has a choice to make. We can keep prioritizing brands, celebrities, and labels, or we can double down on what makes wine worth drinking. But doubling down requires effort. It requires real, consistent training for the people who sell and serve wine. It requires restaurants to treat their wine program as more than a line item. It requires retailers to think beyond margin.

People are secondary to place. Wine's future depends on its connection to the land. If we shift our focus to terroir and train those on the front lines to share that story, we can rebuild the trust and curiosity we've lost. Let's help wine get its swagger back by getting back to what actually matters.

Sincerely,
Seth