Editorial: Drink wine. Be lekker.

It’s everywhere on social media: the casual snapshot of someone raising a middle finger with the faintest hint of a smirk, often in a setting of some privilege, expensive wine to hand. The gesture is low-key, offhand, sometimes almost imperceptible, yet it’s meant to convey attitude. At first glance, it might seem like rebellion – a small act of defiance in a world where everyone curates their lives to death.

But I don’t buy it. What started as a statement of defiance has been repeated so often in carefully staged selfies that it’s become predictable. It’s no longer shocking or countercultural; it’s an expected pose in the visual lexicon of social media. Rudeness dressed as irony. What might once have been cheeky, subversive even, now often reads as entitled or self-satisfied. It might be intended as wryly amusing but most times it comes off as performative, signalling coolness or independence without the effort or risk of actual rebellion.

Not defiance but conformity

There is a parallel here with the world of fine wine. Wine, after all, thrives on authenticity. It rewards patience, discernment, and effort – a kind of attention to detail that cannot be faked. Influencers are constantly attempting to stage images of bottles in curated environments, but the character of the wine itself cannot be posed. It is, in its purest form, honest. It does not smirk or posture. It simply is.

Much like the subverted finger, many gestures in wine culture can become hollow. Ridiculously high prices, scarcity narratives, prestige branding, trophy bottlings, critic scores, conspicuous consumption rituals – these are the wine world’s equivalent of flipping the bird. They are meant to signal effortless cool and disregard for convention but deliver little substance. In both cases, style overtakes content. The smirk replaces the craft.

But the beauty of wine is that authenticity will always find its way to the surface. A great Chablis, lean and precise, does not need a finger to signal its worth. A Bordeaux from a modest grower, made with minimal intervention and maximum care, communicates more in a sip than any social-media pose could ever hope to. These wines have stories – ambition, and resourcefulness, hardships overcome – that cannot be faked, no matter how aggressively you post. They are quietly confident, resilient, and unapologetically themselves. They persuade rather than announce.

Conviction with consequence

There is something to admire in the gesture of doing more with less. A winemaker on a tiny vineyard, scraping together resources, tending vines with her own hands, is the real-life embodiment of what the middle finger once promised: independence, defiance, and self-determination. Unlike the recycled pose on a smartphone, her rebellion is tangible. Her success is earned in the vineyard, in the cellar, in the patience required to coax something extraordinary from limited means. That is the kind of audacity worth celebrating. It is the kind of story that transforms a simple glass into a revelation.

Increasingly, that defiance shows up in how the land is farmed. Choosing sustainable – even regenerative – viticulture, restoring soils rather than reducing them to a chemically propped-up monoculture, working with biodiversity instead of against it: this is rebellion with consequences. It photographs beautifully – flowering cover crops, cattle between the rows, life returning to tired ground – but unlike the obligatory middle finger, it isn’t staged for effect. In an era obsessed with short-term optics and quarterly returns, committing to the slow renewal of living vineyards might be the most subversive act of all.

Irony and posturing have their place – sometimes, we all need to shake our fists at convention – but they cannot replace craft. The Instagram gesture, no matter how perfectly framed, is ephemeral. Wine, particularly fine wine, offers a different kind of satisfaction: lasting, layered, and infinitely interpretable. It teaches humility even as it inspires awe. It does not care about your followers or your online persona. It rewards those willing to slow down, to taste carefully, and to appreciate context.

Ultimately, the lesson is simple: style may catch the eye, but substance wins hearts and minds. Attitude may garner likes, but craft earns respect. A middle finger is fleeting; a fine wine lingers. And for anyone chasing big dreams with limited resources – whether in the vineyard or in life – there is no substitute for the slow, uncompromising work of creation. That is where real rebellion lives.