Despite what the wine trade might prefer to believe, wine’s social license to operate has never been guaranteed.
Wine has never survived on utility alone. It survived because societies chose to see it as part of culture, hospitality and collective life. But today, wine’s cultural relevance is being challenged from many sides. The health lobby have been talking about zero safe level for alcohol for two years now; the gym culture is telling everyone on social media to cut out alcohol and young aspirational stars are now proudly abstinent. At the same time, representations of wine – and fine wine in particular – are often associated with elitism, exclusion, excess or irrelevance.
If cultural relevance underpins wine’s legitimacy and ultimately its long-term economic viability, then understanding how cultural relevance is created, sustained and renewed becomes one of the most important challenges facing the wine sector today.
A changing landscape
At the most basic level, wine is alcohol. And alcohol, consumed beyond moderation, carries public-health risks that governments are increasingly willing to regulate. That alone puts wine under scrutiny.
Being an agricultural product doesn’t guarantee legitimacy either. It’s not hard to question the relevance of a non-essential crop at a time of resources scarcity, particularly one that relies heavily on pesticides. A 2012 French Senate report found that viticulture accounted for 14.4% of pesticide purchases while covering just 3.3% of agricultural land; even today, the industry still puts the figure at around 12.7%.
Nor does the economic power of an industry determine its ability to endure over time and across societies. The fur industry, once worth billions of dollars at its peak in the 1980s, is now on the brink of extinction following shifts in societal values.
What has long protected wine is something less tangible: its status as a cultural good.
As long as wine is seen as a product that carries meaning beyond its functional use or economic value, it will benefit from a form of tolerance that goes beyond its other realities.
Increasingly, it cannot.
The power of public perception
‘Why do we drink wine?’
This was a question that Véronique Lemoine, technical director at La Cité du Vin and the Foundation for Wine Civilisations in Bordeaux, explored at a recent conference held at the Cité.
‘If no one feels like drinking wine – if there is no desire for wine, no desire even for the act of drinking it’, she says, ‘then there is no wine.’
This desire for wine is fuelled by collective narratives. ‘For us humans’, she continues, ‘fiction is as real as the ground we walk on. It is what supports us in the world.’
For 8,000 years, wine has been upheld by powerful stories and representations, linking it to divinity, health, social status, conviviality and power, all of which have supported its consumption.
But these traditional narratives have always been in flux.
‘These traditional values and collective representations are, by definition, imaginary’, she says. ‘And if they are imaginary, it means they can change. Today, very few people drink wine because of its connection to the divine, for example, or because it is considered good for their health.’
Wine’s traditional narratives are therefore fragile, subject to change, and even to disappearance.
Which raises a more uncomfortable question. What happens if the remaining stories, such as the idea of wine as something that brings people together and allows conviviality, joy and conversation, start to erode as well?
The CEO, the bon vivant and the embarrassing uncle
At the same conference, Vins & Société’s director Krystel Lepresle presented a study exploring how French consumers perceive wine drinkers. Three dominant archetypes emerged – all male. They were the CEO, who’s successful, polished and always drinking the ‘best’; the bon vivant, who enjoys life and therefore enjoys wine; and the embarrassing uncle, whose overconsumption leads to awkward, often inappropriate behaviour.
Today, the CEO is losing its aspirational power. Once seen as the embodiment of success, the figure of the middle-aged man in a suit performing status through consumption is increasingly being rejected as outdated and disconnected. From Olivia Pope in Scandal to the Lannisters in Game of Thrones, from The White Lotus to Succession, (fine) wine is often associated with characters who are ultra-privileged, morally ambiguous and disconnected from reality. Fine wine, in this context, has become a symbol of domination and contempt rather than aspiration.
The bon vivant image is also shifting. What was once a positive figure is increasingly collapsing into the figure of the embarrassing uncle. Overindulgence, once seen as a rite of passage for young people learning their limits, is increasingly seen as morally unacceptable. In France, the bon vivant is also tied to other increasingly contested behaviours, including eating meat, celebrating local identity and taking pride in terroir. None of these is neutral any more. They carry social and, at times, political weight because they often align, fairly or not, with more conservative or even far-right positions.
Taken together, these representations offer few positive associations. For younger audiences, becoming a wine drinker means either adopting the codes of an out-of-touch elite or risking being associated with excess and irrelevance.
Regulation follows perception
It is easy to think of collective stories as a spontaneous outburst of individual creativity. The reality is, they are often created and influenced, notably by regulations. Regulation is ultimately a response to what society believes matters – and what it fears.
In past crises, French policy-makers operated on the assumption that wine was worth preserving, and acted accordingly.
‘If you look at contemporary crisis in France’, says Olivier Jacquet, research engineer, and UNESCO Chair of Cultures and Traditions of Wine at the University of Burgundy, ‘resilience always came from the same trilogy: the scientific world, the producers themselves and the politicians.’
In France, politicians, he explains, have been instrumental in shaping the cultural value of wine. The concepts of ‘terroir’ and ‘tradition’ were presented as a deliberate and strategic invention developed during the 20th century to overcome economic crises and build market appeal. They were institutionalised through the creation of the AOC system.
‘Typicité’, he says, ‘is not just a taste profile but a cultural construct created to link a wine’s origin directly to its quality and to transform the concept of “terroir” into a positive attribute.’
However, political support for agriculture is becoming more conditional, affected by environmental priorities, trade policy and budget constraints. As a result, agriculture is no longer considered self-evident public good, but must justify its place within a broader set of societal expectations.
This is particularly concerning considering that the European Union will begin to revise the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP, the EU’s main framework for supporting agriculture through subsidies, rural development funding and market regulation) in the second half of this year.
The industry can no longer assume it will be supported by politicians that will continue to shape, articulate and support the cultural value of wine as it has done in the past. It needs to make a stronger case for why it matters, including a clear articulation of wine’s contemporary cultural value, so that political support becomes evident and justified.
What wine can do to remain culturally relevant
If the legitimacy of wine rests on the presence of positive collective representation, it is essential for the industry to clearly articulate the relevance of wine culture, and do so from a broader societal perspective, not simply from the viewpoint of those who produce, sell or profit from it.
Integrate the urban dimension
It is relatively easy to demonstrate the cultural value of viticulture. The vine is a complex and demanding plant, and it requires a long-term relationship with the land. Growing it involves locally developed and transmitted knowledge, shaping both communities and landscapes. This cultural dimension has been widely recognised, including through the designation of many vineyard regions as UNESCO World Heritage sites.
It is harder, however, to articulate the cultural relevance of wine drinking itself.
Discussions around wine culture are still largely framed through rural heritage, landscape and the economic value of production. Yet most consumers encounter wine not in vineyards, but in cities. Wine helps structure forms of hospitality, sociability, celebration and conversation that shape urban life, from restaurants and bars to rituals of gathering and shared experience.
What would cities look like if wine disappeared from them altogether? What forms of social interaction, hospitality and public life would disappear with it? While the economic contribution of wine is well documented, its broader role in shaping the texture and quality of urban life remains far less clearly articulated.
Without integrating this urban dimension into the conversation around wine culture, the industry risks reducing wine’s cultural legitimacy to a rural heritage issue, rather than demonstrating its broader contribution to contemporary social and cultural life.
Redefine what excellence means in wine
The way we collectively choose to define greatness matters, too.
In the UK, the fine-wine category is often framed through the lens of price, investment value and social status. While these attributes are undoubtedly important, they are not the only – or necessarily the most compelling today – ways to understand excellence and greatness in wine.
In Latin languages, the word ‘culture’ designates both the arts and cultivated crops. Culture comes from colere, meaning to cultivate, tend, care for. In other words, growth through care.
In this sense, fine wine can be understood as the result of care: care for the land from which it originates, for the people who produce it, and for those who will ultimately consume it.
Fine-wine producers are often characterised by a continuous pursuit of excellence. This pursuit can be described through the principles of le beau, le bien, le bon – the beautiful, the good, the right – and by how these ideas are translated into both practice and outcome.
This perspective highlights two important considerations. First, it is necessary to clarify what these principles mean in a contemporary context. Once defined, they can serve as a basis for renewed and positive collective representations.
Second, this pursuit of excellence reflects a broader human aspiration. It reflects a universal tendency to go beyond necessity to seek meaning, in a pursuit that transcends time and context.
Our capacity to articulate this at a collective level has stakes extending far beyond the fine-wine category itself. The values, narratives and ideals celebrated at the top of the pyramid often shape how the wider wine sector is perceived. The way we define greatness in fine wine therefore influences not only the future of fine wine, but also the legitimacy, attractiveness and cultural relevance of wine as a whole.
Be where culture is formed
Véronique Lemoine tells us that we drink wine because we have the desire to drink wine. No desire, no consumption.
The challenges facing wine, however, might be arising at an earlier stage. Jean-Noël Kapferer, Professor Emeritus at HEC Paris and author of The Luxury Strategy, describes what he calls the ‘equation of dreams’, meaning visibility, desirability and purchase. As he explained in a recent Areni podcast, everything begins with visibility. Wine must first be seen by a broad audience before it can be desired by some and ultimately purchased by a few.
The goal for wine is to become part of the visual and social grammar of how people who don’t yet think of themselves as wine drinkers actually live.
The question is not simply whether people see wine, but where they encounter it and what it comes to represent.
For much of its history, wine was woven into the fabric of cultural life. It appeared naturally in the places where people gathered, celebrated, created, debated and built communities. Today, many of those cultural institutions have weakened or fragmented, while new ones have emerged. Yet much of the wine industry’s attention remains focused on talking to itself: through trade fairs, competitions, awards, specialist publications and industry events.
If wine wants to remain culturally relevant, it needs to be present where culture is being created, not only where wine is being discussed. That means engaging more seriously with the worlds of art, music, food, sport, gaming, entertainment, hospitality and public life. It also means accepting that cultural legitimacy cannot be claimed through heritage alone.
The challenge is to understand how – and where – culture is formed today, and to find a meaningful place within it. That will require curiosity, imagination and, perhaps most difficult of all, a willingness to question some of the assumptions that have shaped wine’s understanding of itself for decades.
Conclusion
The wine world needs to treat cultural relevance as a strategic priority.
If it fails to renew what wine means for a new generation, no amount of prestige, history or economic value will be enough to secure its future. Cultural legitimacy cannot be inherited indefinitely; it must be continually earned.
That means rebuilding wine’s presence in everyday cultural life, creating more accessible pathways into the category, and articulating its value in terms that resonate with contemporary society rather than relying solely on the narratives of the past.
Culture is not something wine benefits from passively. It is something that must be actively cultivated, renewed and defended. Because ultimately, people do not protect what they do not value, and they do not value what they no longer see as relevant to their lives.
Pauline Vicard is head of London-based think tank Areni Global. Earlier this year, she was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole, a distinction given by the French Republic for services rendered to agriculture.
The image at the top of this article was created by Master1305 for Shutterstock.
