Why White Wine Is The Future Of Wine
Kicking off a month of "winter whites" with my Loire chenin blanc bottle picks. As well as some thoughts on the coming Neo-Prohibition era.
Today’s newsletter was to meant to kick off a series on white wines for winter. And this will be the first in a series that will run every Friday in January, first with today’s post on Loire Chenin Blanc, followed by pieces on Friuli whites, new-wave Albariño, and other surprises and discoveries. I cheekily declared white wine “in” and red wine “out” in my annual In-and-Out list a few weeks ago, so I’m guessing reader aren’t surprised.
But before we get into the wine, I want to address a serious news item that broke as I was readying this newsletter for publication this morning. Apparently, the U.S. Surgeon General has called for alcoholic beverages to carry a cancer warning label—similar to cigarettes. You can read about it in the New York Times, which has frankly become a mouthpiece for neo-prohibitionists and their questionable scientific studies on the dangers of moderate drinking.
Any new labeling will take an act of Congress. But in case you’ve forgotten, our Congress (as well as our Supreme Court) is rife with religious zealotry, our incoming president doesn’t drink and has spoken out against alcohol (even though he owns a winery) and his choice to head the Health and Human Services Department is an ex-heroin-addict-turned-anti-alcohol-advocate. All this as a debate currently rages over the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are set to be updated in 2025.
So here we are, in the place I’ve been warning about for the past couple of years, most loudly in the Washington Post and in Wine Enthusiast, where in late 2023 I suggested that wine and spirits would soon become “the New Tobacco.”
Much of the current neo-prohibitionist agenda is based on a 2018 a study in The Lancet asserting that “no level of alcohol consumption improves health.” That was the same year the U.S. deleted the dietary guidelines that said moderate drinking could lower the risk of heart disease (America’s actual number-one killer). But a subsequent study in 2021, in the International Journal of Epidemiology, claims that the analysis and findings in that 2018 Lancet study are flawed. “One cannot now say any amount of alcohol is harmful in the same way as one can say any amount of smoking is harmful,” said study co-author Sir Nicholas Wald, a University College London professor. Along with co-author Chris Frost, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, he argued that there is no scientific model that can dictate exactly how much alcohol it will take to affect one’s health. “One need not feel,” Wald said, “that the only safe alcohol intake is zero.”
I believe a compromise to all this back and forth lies in the growing “mindful drinking” movement, which sees drinking as a spectrum. This reasonable approach is about “normalizing alternative options but also admitting that alcohol has a purpose within our culture and we need to recognize that importance,” says Derek Brown, author of Mindful Mixology: A Comprehensive Guide to No- and Low-Alcohol Cocktails, wellness coach and founder of Positive Damage, which consults on no- and low-alcohol beverages.
Mindful drinking, for Brown, is not even about totally cutting alcohol out of your life. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You have options. And you can explore those options on your own terms,” Brown says. “Alcohol can be a beautiful cultural expression. I don’t want that to go away. I think what needs to go away is problem drinking, not drinks. You can live a healthy lifestyle that incorporates alcohol. You don’t see ice cream arguing that it’s good for you. Ice cream argues that it’s delicious and fun, which is a very valid argument.” You don’t see warning labels on ice cream, either.
What are your thoughts?
Why White Wine Is The Future Of Wine
The rise of white wine’s popularity—as well as the decline of red wine—is no longer anecdotal or apocryphal. The news (here and here and elsewhere) that white and rosé now surpass red in worldwide consumption may have surprised a lot of people, but the data is real. The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) reported that white wine alone now accounts for 43 percent of global wine consumption, up 10 percent over the past two decades. In the U.S., the world’s biggest consumer of white wine, consumption rose 65 percent from 2000 to 2021. Meanwhile, worldwide red wine consumption is down more than 15 percent since 2007, according to the OIV report.
How the industry, sommeliers, and collectors react to this new consumer reality will be fascinating, and we’re already seeing interesting moves in established wine regions.
Look at what’s happening in Bourgueil. The prestigious Loire Valley appellation known for its ageworthy cabernet franc reds (from producers like Yannick Amirault and Pierre Gauthier) is now on its way to becoming a white-wine appellation. In July, Bourgueil winegrowers voted on a plan to allow dry whites made from chenin blanc under strict regulations: hand harvested, low yields, less than six grams of residual sugar, and a ban on chaptalization and press pumps.
“We have beautiful terroirs for chenin. We do not understand why chenin was forgotten in the decree which gave birth to our AOC in 1937,” said Philippe Boucard, the former president of the appellation’s governing body ODG Bourgueil. The reasoning behind the coming change, Boucard told the French trade publication Vitisphere, is straightforward: “At a time when the future of red is compromised, why compartmentalize us and forbid us from making white?”