Wine and Chips

It all started with a tasting of chips and wine.  You read me correctly. Chips and wine.

Last week Food & Wine magazine hosted a tasting for members of Les Dames d’Escoffier’s at their swanky offices overlooking the Hudson River. Twelve of us—all professionals in wine and food—sat around a high-tech, wooden table ready to get started.  Our hosts, Antonia LoPresti and Ray Isle, had prepared a unique experience for us which organically morphed into a free-wheeling conversation about the challenges of marketing wine to today’s young consumers.

Our featured speaker, Ray Isle, is the magazine’s long-reigning and incredibly wine savvy senior wine editor.  His mission that evening was to demonstrate a novel way to pair wine with food. Ray chose America’s favorite junk food, potato chips, as the foil for his selection of French and American wines.  “After all,” he told us, “It’s all about bringing wine and food together and seeing what happens in your mouth.” 

A happy marriage: chips and wine

We started with a glass of Collet Champagne paired with Halls’ original sea salt kettle chips.  Ray explained how Champagne’s bubbles and naturally high acidity softens the attack of the chips’ pronounced fat and salt content. Then we tasted a Massican Sauvignon Blanc from Napa Valley whose tartness and aggressive grassiness were tamed by a second offering of potato chips flavored with sea salt and vinegar.

And so the tasting proceeded until we finished with a 2019 William Seylem’s Zinfandel, an incredibly complex, fruit-forward wine. Ray paired this with barbecue chips. The chips’ wild array of flavorings—honey, onion, garlic, hickory smoke, barley malt, and tomato—paired seamlessly with the wine. Why? Because the rich flavors of each were on equal footing.

After the tasting I googled to see how the winery described their wine:

A fruit bowl of black fruits and currant with undertones of anise, fennel, and bramble saturate the nose. An intriguing note of India ink also comes through and is woven into this complex and layered wine. The oak is nearly invisible but provides hints of wood spices and vanilla.

We will refer to this slightly off-putting type of wine description later in our discussion. But suffice it to say for now that all of Ray’s wine and chips pairings worked brilliantly.

Debunking the 100-point wine score system

During our informal tasting, the attendees peppered Ray with questions. The first was how had he managed to survive 17 years in his job, an unheard-of tenure for a print magazine editor in today’s digital world.

Ray explained that from the get-go he never tied his reporting to the wine community’s obsession with wine ratings. He was referring to the 100-point rating system which was, and pretty much still is, the benchmark for evaluating wines. “How could the same wine have a 97 from The Wine Spectator, a 92 from The Wine Enthusiast and an 89 from Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate,” he questioned citing the three most influential wine publications when he started at the magazine. For Ray, it was and always will be about the way wine reacts with food, not about an entirely subjective, numerical score.

A cheeseman’s bell curve

In fact, instead of the traditional wine scoring method, Ray prefers something more straight-forward. He freely admitted to appropriating—but also gave full credit to—the cheese guru Max McCallen’s “+2 Rating System.” Max created this format for judging cheeses and how they reacted with wine and other food combinations. His principle is simple. Instead of the complicated 100-points, Max’s ranges from -2 to +2. If a pairing is great, it’s awarded a +2.  If the pairing is horrible, then a -2. Mostly, however, the ratings will score in the +1s and -1s range with the majority falling in the middle as average (or a 0) just as you would find with any bell-shaped curve.

Ray’ further explained that his approach to wine reporting has always been based on story telling.  For him, each wine has its own narrative, character, and personality.  Wine is something which is alive and so much more than an arbitrary rating number, string of unrelatable adjectives or a chemical analysis (ie acidity, pH, etc.). Ray was taking aim at the most common way to evaluate wine.

America’s wine crib sheet

Not only does Ray reject the 100-point scoring method but also the outdated vocabulary lingo used for describing a wine. He was referring to the Wine Aroma Wheel developed in the late ‘80s by Dr. Ann Nobel, a professor of enology at UC Davis. Her wheel was divided into sections to help visualize 80 different flavors, scents and aromatic qualities found in most red and white wines. At the time, it functioned as a crib sheet for Americans who were just starting to learn about wine. Bear in mind, forty years ago most wines were imported from Europe and were mostly marketed to wealthy, white men. Also at that time California’s fine wine industry was still in its infancy.

As helpful as it was, the aroma wheel had some inherent flaws. “It used terms such as ‘gooseberry,’” Ray gave as an example using a common descriptor for Sauvignon Blanc. “But have you ever tasted a gooseberry? Its reference is totally meaningless for most people.” He’s correct.  Think back to the description of the Zinfandel and its reference to a “note of Indian ink.” Really?

The gooseberry debacle sparked a lively discussion with our tasting group about how best to communicate wines’ virtues to today’s younger, more diverse audience.  Of particular interest are millennials. Given this generation (those born between 1981 to 1996) represents the largest potential target for any product, you can imagine the impact it has on the wine industry’s future.

But to do so, let’s add some context. It’s no secret that sales are down for wine, especially in the $15 and under category. But why?

Too much choice

Francine Kowalsky, a New York-based wine marketer, offered this explanation for wine’s tepid sales. “The answer is simple: competition. Millennials are moving away from wine because of an ever-growing number of alternative beverages: beer, spirits, hard seltzers, low alcohol, and non-alcohol wines.” To that list Ray added THC beverages with low doses of cannabis which are just hitting the market. To further compound wine sales’ decline, our group lamented the trend of young consumers joining the sobriety-curious movement—such as Dry January—and even abstaining all together from alcohol.

To reengage consumers, our group collectively agreed that marketers need to rethink their sales strategy. The first thing to do to improve sales would be to better understand today’s landscape. The wine industry needs to be more relevant, more environmentally conscious, and more responsive to our country’s changing racial and ethnic make-up.

A new wine lexicon in development

Luckily, the wine industry is not totally clueless. For example, developing a new lexicon.  to describe wine is a new focus. In fact, it was one of the hot topics at a recent Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Napa Valley. This is an annual event where industry experts gather to discuss trends and best practices. 

Let’s unpack this a bit further. A former colleague of mine and top wine marketer, Kimberly Charles, was one of the symposium’s organizers. She had this to say about the industry’s quest for a new wine “lingo,” one which would resonate with today’s consumers.

Initiate versus intimidate

“Our frameworks have been Eurocentric for some time, and that's all well and good considering the provenance and history of wine production, commerce and education primarily emanating from Europe. But times, people and marketplaces have changed.  We explored finding descriptors that speak to one's cultural references, alternative ways of learning (visual, auditory) as well as analogies that can guide and invite a potential buyer.”

In a country where people of direct European ancestry are a shrinking portion of the population, there is a definite need to make wine more relatable for people of Asian and African heritage, for example. Actually, since 2020 the wine industry has worked to diversify and attract more people of color both as consumers and wine professionals.  However, there is still much more to be done. 

A millennial point of view

The day after the tasting, I brought up our group’s discussion with my granddaughter, Nicole Judd and her new husband, Ben. (Both are in their early thirties.) According to the Nicole, “I don’t think the issue is that millennials aren’t interested in drinking wine, but more that we need something that tastes good, is fair-priced, and has a well-designed label to post on Instagram.”

And Nicole was right.  Francine had expressed a similar sentiment the evening before. She had reminded our group that most of us had started our wine journey in college with bottles of cheap, slightly sweet wine: Gallo’s Hearty Burgundy, Bartles & Jaymes, and for a special occasion, Mateus. “We need to offer young consumers a gateway wine, something which tastes good to them, is affordable and easily accessible, preferably in a can!”

Nicole’s husband Ben added that “Wine requires some level of education to truly appreciate it, and that unless it’s a hobby for someone, they’re likely not going to opt for wine without guidance.”

A hybrid retail environment: Books and wine

And how to accomplish this?  One way is to present wine “guidance” to a young, multicultural audience is to think outside the traditional white tablecloth or classroom box.  Nicole told me about how her local wine shop has brought relevance, fun, and experiential excitement to the process of learning about wines:

“My favorite way that Ben and I purchase wine is through “The 17 Club”, a monthly curated wine membership run by our favorite shop/café in St. Pete.  (Check them out- they’re half book, half wine shop called Book and Bottle (https://www.bookandbottlestpete.com/)  

“With The 17 Club, we get two bottles of red, hand-selected by the shop owner and the shop's sommelier. They send us an email explaining all the tasting and pairing notes, as well as why they selected the two bottles and stories about the winery that produced their choices. We love it! We get to try wines we wouldn’t necessarily gravitate towards and have found a few of our favorite wines too. They have different membership options where you can get white wine or bubbles too. Then at the end of each quarter, they do a free tasting of all the wines from the past three months. Delicious wines aside, the shop owner has built a wonderful community of locals who love to imbibe with a good book.”  

Understanding your target audience

To wrap up our Food & Wine experience and impromptu wine marketing discussion, Ray proffered that young people also seek transparency and authenticity in their wine choice.  “They want to know what’s in the bottle so put your ingredients on the label.” To which Francine added, “If your product is responsibly made, add that as well.” Afterall, younger consumers are environmentally conscious and health oriented. This means wines which are organically, sustainably, or biodynamically produced do matter.   

Furthermore, millennials are curious about how vintners are responding to global warming and are not averse to trying new heat-loving varieties. Not only that, but they are willing to pay more for it as well!

To bring this blog discussion to a close about new ways to expand wine’s community, here’s one final thought.  Go where millennials get their information.  Market to them across all social media platforms. This means Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Snapchat.  However, perhaps not TikTok right now!

And, although it pains me to say it—as it is a betrayal of journalistic principles I learned years ago!—throw in an influencer or two. This is where young consumers get their product recommendations. Not from a Wine Spectator score sheet.

But this doesn’t take anything away from Ray Isle’s timeless, and open-minded success in knowing how to reach people of all ages and get them excited about wine. His secret sauce? Well at least one of them: Chips and wine.