Editorial: Wine’s problem isn’t storytelling – it’s relevance
By Christian Eedes, 8 June 2026
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The South African wine industry is deep in introspection, as it no doubt should be. At both the recent Wine Summit organised by industry body South Africa Wine and the Wine Talk conference as hosted by education hotshop winelab.Africa, discussion repeatedly returned to a common concern: how does wine remain relevant in a world that increasingly seems indifferent, if not hostile, to it?
The instinctive answer from many quarters is “storytelling”. Tell consumers about old vines, remarkable terroirs and family histories. Tell them about sustainability and holistic land management practices. Tell them about authenticity and inclusivity.
There is merit in all of this. The problem is that every premium category now tells stories. Coffee tells stories. Craft beer tells stories. Whisky tells stories. Even insurance companies and banks tell stories. The challenge facing wine is not that it lacks stories but that it increasingly struggles to command attention. Indeed, it may be that the industry’s greatest challenge is not communication but relevance.
The South African wine sector often assumes that consumers are simply waiting to be educated. Yet this assumption deserves scrutiny. Most consumers are not waking up in the morning wondering about decomposed granite soils, heritage vineyards or spontaneous fermentation. They are thinking about enjoyment, identity, value and social connection.
This disconnect is particularly significant in South Africa, where wine continues to carry considerable cultural baggage. For many consumers, especially black consumers, it remains associated with a world that feels distant, exclusive and not entirely welcoming.
At Wine Talk, many POC attendees spoke of still feeling disregarded by the industry. That’s a sentiment it’s easy to dismiss, given that many now derive an income from wine, directly or indirectly. But to do so would be to ignore their lived experience, which, you know, isn’t cool.
History plays a role. So do pricing, representation, language and social context. The industry’s tendency to frame the challenge as one of perception rather than structure risks misreading what the problem actually is.
Wine possesses several characteristics that can easily be mistaken for – and sometimes genuinely become – status signalling. Unlike most consumer products, wine demands a considerable amount of knowledge. To participate fully, one is expected to understand grape varieties, regions, producers, vintages, production methods and tasting vocabulary. This creates a barrier to entry that enthusiasts often underestimate.
The situation is compounded by wine’s historical association with wealth, education and social class. Although wine consumption has broadened considerably over recent decades, these associations persist. Meanwhile, wine culture often drifts into flexing. Knowing an obscure Swartland producer, a cult Loire Cab Franc appellation, or a rare grape variety (Maccabeau, anyone?) can confer status within the community. The line between genuine enthusiasm and one-upmanship can become perilously thin.
Wine communication has not always helped matters. Descriptions featuring “graphite”, “oyster shell” and “sweaty saddle” (don’t get me started on “minerality”) may delight fellow enthusiasts but can sound absurd to someone simply trying to determine whether a wine will be enjoyable to drink. What insiders regard as useful precision can easily be interpreted by outsiders as performance.
How to fix things
At the same time, broader cultural forces are at work. Contemporary culture increasingly values accessibility and relatability while displaying growing scepticism towards traditional gatekeepers. Critics, journalists, academics and experts of all kinds command less automatic deference than they once did. Wine inevitably inherits some of this distrust.
The irony is that most serious wine lovers are not attempting to signal superiority. They are fascinated by complexity in much the same way birdwatchers, music obsessives or test cricket fans are fascinated by their chosen subjects. The difference is that wine carries social and economic connotations that those pursuits generally do not.
This has important implications for how the industry thinks about growth. If wine is perceived as a club, marketing campaigns are unlikely to solve the problem. Inclusion is not created by invitation alone. It emerges when consumers repeatedly encounter wine in environments where they feel comfortable, represented and unjudged.
That means moving beyond the idea of audience development towards participation and ownership. It means greater visibility for black winemakers, viticulturists, educators, retailers and commentators. It means reducing unnecessary jargon and focusing more on taste, occasion and enjoyment. It means meeting consumers in their own cultural spaces rather than expecting them to enter wine’s.
Most importantly, it means changing the tone of expertise. Wine’s challenge is not to become less knowledgeable but to become more generous with its knowledge. Too often communication adopts an implicit hierarchy in which experts explain and consumers learn. A more effective model may be one of shared discovery. Curiosity tends to be more attractive than authority. Humility generally gets you further than rigid certainty.
None of this represents a repudiation of wine’s traditions. Nor does it require abandoning the stories that make wine compelling. But the industry’s current moment calls for something more than better storytelling. What is required is a complete rethink of where wine fits in people’s lives.
The future of wine will not be secured by persuading consumers that they should care about wine. It will be secured by ensuring that wine matters in the contexts that consumers already care about. Only then do the stories have an audience. Until that happens, the industry’s challenge is not finding better ways to tell its stories. It is finding more people willing to listen.
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Bruno Darsam | 9 June 2026
Excellent article.
I’ve often said in discussions with colleagues in the wine industry that if we want to grow the consumer base and attract more people to wine, we need to simplify it.
Wine should not be intimidating. It should not be perceived as an elite product reserved for experts, nor as something overly complex. Education is undoubtedly a key part of the solution, but so is making wine more approachable.
Tasting descriptors need to be easier for consumers to relate to, and food pairings should focus more on everyday dishes rather than exceptional occasions. The more accessible wine becomes, the more people will feel comfortable exploring and enjoying it.
Richard Gundersen | 9 June 2026
Indeed. I am reminded “Don’t sell the product you sell, sell the problem you solve” in other words, the pleasure or enjoyment you can create
Louis | 9 June 2026
I agree with much of this, but I would add one nuance: storytelling still matters, provided the story starts with people rather than wine.
Too often there’s a disconnect between the stories being told and what consumers actually encounter where they are most likely to buy or enjoy wine: at their local bottle store, neighbourhood restaurant or casual social gathering.
Ultimately, people fall in love with wine for emotional reasons and stay for the stories. The industry may need to spend less time explaining itself and more time creating opportunities for people to discover that connection for themselves. 🍷
Justin M | 9 June 2026
As a marketer and wine consumer of 35+ years, I can’t argue with your valid points. However, as a close follower of the industry globally and more so in SA, I’m very aware of the deficiencies you highlight here. Yet female industry representation has multiplied 20-fold in as many years. Racial inclusion has multiplied to a lesser extent, particularly females of colour. These are good signs, but insufficient. However the reality is that land ownership remains predominantly white and that won’t change without structural macroeconomic change. Our government has failed to create the environment required to educate, provision essential services and address the criminal theft of hundreds of billions in state resources. Not that this lies at their doorstep alone, it lies at all of ours. Many farms & estates have made significant strides towards economic participation, the results of which are on show at multiple wineries. These are important stories – they point to the problems you’ve highlighted – but these stories are also part of the solution. Your readership profile mirrors the reality of the high end wine consumer, many of whom have the means to spend several hundred rand on a single bottle of good wine. As a consumer I tend to support the wineries that invest in people & avoid the overpriced wines made for tourists & HNWIs. I wonder how many of your readers are aware of which wineries make a contribution to addressing these issues. You have a role in that too.
Erwin Lingenfelder | 9 June 2026
Crossroads indeed. As I am nearing retirement I actually have to ask myself what a quality wine is worth. An online wine supplier has recently flighted 4G at R8 600 a bottle on Instagram. When I dared ask the question “who actually buys this wine?” it was promptly removed. What a total disconnect. While I treasure the luminaries left in my cellar after years of collection I am now trolling the sub-R200 wines available on our market. Let me assure you that my enjoyment of these cheapies is right up there.
Donald Griffiths | 9 June 2026
And yet a healthy portion of our producers will spend their entire marketing budget chasing export business at Prowein etc. over and above hosting a series of tastings outside the comfort zone of the Cape winelands (and in some cases just Cape Town). The export market is seen by too many as some sort of vinotopia where the consumers are more educated, the wine is therefore more appreciated and the commercial opportunity is thus more attractive. As with any issue the solution often starts with a healthy dollop of introspection and realising that if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.
Milly | 15 June 2026
As a black male from a previously disadvantaged background my first impression and encounter simply put reminded me of coffee it’s grade and whether it’s 100% coffee or 60%. With my limited knowledge I’ve always used that coffee scale to rate wines I encounter. If you have probably 4 types of beans, and then ground coffee and instant coffee. Then all of a sudden you have these different types of coffee from espresso to bullet proof coffee.
Anyone who understands coffee knows that it can be bitter, bold, smooth, aromatic or mild not over powering. Red wines in particular follows through the same process as already pointed out the jargon becomes a gatekeeper.
Secondly, if red wine pars well with red meat, like steak or beef stew and also opens up your appetite; why is it that all red wine adverts are at restaurants and meat is displayed on plates whereas beer advertisements the meat is on a braai at the back of a house with beer somewhere there. The framework on its own makes it inaccessible. Even though people know the beer or cider kills their appetite they will still take it. Maybe because they don’t know any better or that wine requires food more especially protein rich dishes.
Once again, that is another point status in society which has been reiterated.
When it comes to red wine in particular there one single truth I know about it. That is something they should have capitalised on by they seem to keep missing it. It’s the only alcohol beverage with alcohol percentage between 10% up to 20% ABV no other players (spirit, liqueurs) utilize that range. If people no longer drink wine for whatever reasons in statistical terms it means two things which leads to alcohol abuse. Their consumption range from 4%-8% ABV and then suddenly they jump to 30% ABC up the way to 47%ABV. Very few people who drink wine become alcoholics or depend on it like a crutch because 10-20% is the middle of the road. Without the additional calories or extreme hangovers and liver stress it goes without saying there are more benefits in the red than what’s obvious.
There’s a health care practitioners favourite from the United States that instead of passing judgement on high risk individuals they make sure that they have sanitary tools to minimise infection and carrying the risk over. Alcohol education deserved the same treatment. Other than limiting it to the negative impact but if you treat it with respect and understand it’s chemistry it can be your friend. That way it cannot have any control over you. Before you get confused imagine this. If I have lived a fit healthy lifestyle for 20years before introducing alcohol into the picture. I will and can find a way to balance the two and make it work. In the inverse if a person is introduced to alcohol very early on in their lives, they obviously will need to be careful about their drinking or cut it out all together BUT with wine, calories and toxicity are already under control and it means a person can be able to do both.
Last point is, cellaring I hope one day I will input to say more on it. Imagine you have been collecting vintage wines with the expectation to start opening them after 15 years or so. Right about the same time your doctor advices you to stop drinking.
What then? About your investment? All I want as a consumer is to drink what I can, when I can. That dry red with 10 years on its back must be on the forefront to be consumed today… to be continued
Gerhard GB Van Huyssteen | 18 June 2026
What a great comment/analysis, Milly! You should turn these ideas into an article for Winemag 🙂