So where have they gone wrong? The two-fold answer can be summarized as not enough imagination and too much snobbery. Here’s how it began:

Back in the 80’s, people were going nuts over a sweet pink wine called White-Zinfandel— one of the first true wine crazes in the US. Then some of the fancier folks learned to say a new French word, Chardonnay. (Never mind that the stuff they snatched up by the DeLorean-full was a new ultra-oak-barrel-flavored style, often spiked with walloping “hint” of sugar.) Riding the wave of the Chardonnay craze, California winemakers ruled the day. Robert Mondavi was crowned King, Napa became a household name (erroneously considered synonymous with the entire winegrowing region of California), opportunist lawyer Jess Jackson invented Kendall-Jackson and laid claim to grape-growing and winemaking itself, and the ever-changing Gallo family, in Madonna-like fashion, re-invented themselves yet again and got even richer. White wine was “in,” and life was good.

Then, as if on cue, a dude named Morley Safer on a way-popular TV show called 60 Minutes served up a segment called The French Paradox. This story publicized a European study which seemed to show that French people—no matter how much they chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes while eating butter-laden, cholesterol-choked meat sautéed in oil and covered with cheese—stayed fit, didn’t have heart attacks and lived to a ripe, old age. What was their secret? Red wine.

What a stroke of luck for California winemakers!  Per capita consumption of wine in the US doubled as the press releases flew and the headlines abounded. In fact, The French Paradox was the only thing the wine industry could talk about for the next 15 years (I am not exaggerating). Red wine was “in,” white was “out” and wine consumption was up—but not up nearly as much as it might have been had the industry resisted this silly, fad-driven “in and out” marketing mentality.

In my view, by consistently playing into media hype about “hot” wine trends, wine marketers have actually suppressed the growth of wine consumption. Had they taken a longer view, and applied more creativity in developing a cohesive strategy for promoting all wines, US consumption might right now be well on its way toward the 10-gallon European standard.

And that’s just half the problem. In addition to promoting a detrimental fad mentality, the industry has also seemingly done all it can to keep would-be wine drinkers “out of the club” by perpetuating a number of artificial barriers. The most glaring of these is the notion that consumers require “an education” in order to buy, serve or enjoy wine.

In the US today, about half of the adult population have never even tried wine. The biggest problem the wine industry faces is not boosting consumption among those who already like wine, but getting more of the population to drink wine in the first place.

To confront this problem, the wine industry typically takes the rather insulting view that something is wrong with their non-wine drinking prospects. If they’re not drinking wine, it must be because they are hopelessly ignorant, intellectually flawed and in desperate need of wine education. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with non-wine drinkers at all—but there’s everything wrong with the marketers who’ve been bullying them for decades.

It’s not that the prospects don’t know anything about wine, it’s that what they know is wrong. And, naturally, what they know has largely been put in their heads by the very industry that purports to be “educating” them. A few common misconceptions: wine is only for rich white people (take a gander at any issue of The Wine Spectator or coverage of the Napa Valley Wine Auction); wine is complicated (regular readers of this column know that it is less complicated than beer, bread, and cheese); only expensive wine is good and all cheap wine is bad. Hell, if any of that were true, I certainly wouldn’t be drinking the stuff.

So, let’s consider the goal. What does this wild, pie-in-the-sky dream of 10 gallons per person per year look like? Are Europeans guzzling wine at a pace no reasonable American could hope to match? Hardly.

One glass of red wine per day—what doctors now recommend to maintain good health – comes out to 5 gallons per year. Let’s say like a normal wine drinker, you start with a glass of white wine (or sparking wine) at the beginning of your dinner, and have a glass of red with your entrée. Maybe some evenings you opt for beer, or skip the alcohol entirely. Maybe on the weekends you have an extra glass or two. On average, there you are, 10 gallons per year.

Elevating US wine consumption to match the European standard is, without question, an achievable goal. But I predict that until the US industry makes a concerted effort to grow from its current juvenile stage of development (fed on fear, jealousy, rage and conceit) into the first stages of adulthood (characterized by confidence, cooperation, honesty and realism), per capita consumption will remain mired in mid-3- to 4-gallon level. And mark my words, when we do reach 4 gallons, those marketers will in all likelihood throw a party for themselves.

Created for Barbara Adams Beyond Wonderful by
Wine Expert, Michael De Loach.