10
Beverage Media
October 2012
“
I don’t know quite why it’s hap-
pening, but I do know my customers
want to drink lighter,” says Polakoff,
who owns Pogo’s, which specializes in
fine wines and craft liquors and whose
customers are the typical target demo-
graphic for high-end cult wines with
big scores and even bigger alcohol. “It
has ramped up this summer, but it has
been going on for at least a year. Their
palates are changing, and I’ve had to
change the way I buy wine.”
In this, Polakoff’s experience is ap-
parently part of a larger, more indus-
try-wide trend. Consumers, who didn’t
seem to notice as the alcohol level in
wines kept creeping up over the past
decade (or care if they did notice),
are finally paying attention. There’s
increasing evidence that they’re tired
of 15% Chardonnays and 16% Cab-
ernet Sauvignons and Merlots, and
are switching to lighter, less alcoholic
wines. If this is the case, retailers and
restaurateurs who stocked shelves
and wrote wine lists to accommodate
high-alcohol wines are going to have
to take another look at what they’re
doing and how they do it.
“
I don’t know that there’s a short
answer for this, and I don’t know that
everyone immediately needs to drop
15%
wines, especially if they’re still
selling,” says Dave McIntyre, wine col-
umnist for
The Washington Post
. “
But
this is the time to look at what you’re
selling, and be honest with yourself—
are you selling it because your custom-
ers want it or because you think you
should sell it?”
The lower-alcohol movement
has its roots in the decade-old push
against wine scores. Critics like Dan
Berger pointed to a flawed vicious
cycle of winemakers producing high-
er-alcohol wines to get a better score
and not because it made better wine.
On top of that, Berger and others ar-
WINE
WATCH
H
arris Polakoff has been selling wine to some of
Dallas’s most affluent consumers for more than
25
years, and he has never seen anything quite like
this. His store’s sales of Spanish and Italian white
wines are up 25% over the last year, and—even more amazingly—
sales of rosé are up 100%. Not coincidentally, almost all these
wines are lower in alcohol than the ones he usually sells.
High-Octane
Pushback
Responding to wines that
clock in at 30 proof, the
movement to dial back
alcohol is gaining steam
BY JEFF SIEGEL
YOUNGER DRINKERS AREN’T AS
INTERESTED IN HIGH-ALCOHOL WINES
OR THEIR RATINGS AS ARE OLDER WINE
DRINKERS. THEY’RE MORE WILLING TO
EXPERIMENT, WHETHER IT’S WITH LOCAL
WINE OR UNUSUAL GRAPES.
