Apologies From A Winery Owner to a Guest
I owe you an apology.
I put a lot of intentionality into my role in hospitality for our wine businesses. I was focused on our guests feeling welcomed far more than focused on them walking out with case goods. Maybe it’s my Southern roots, but I have always wanted our spaces to feel comfortable to enter. I circled around from behind the tasting bar to greet you at the door. If you didn’t know a Pinot from a peanut, I eagerly gave you a passionate introductory 101 and welcomed you aboard.
Don’t even like wine? I’d regale you with top recommendations for enjoying other librations across the valley. Everyone was made to feel welcomed. Yet the non-drinkers, I probably left cold. I just didn’t know any better. And I didn’t “see” you.
After 20 years in the wine business, I came to a place where my own body was protesting and I was consistently drinking more than I wanted or when I wanted. You can hear more of that story here but the long story short is that I second-guessed my drinking and played around with setting limits for more than six years and when I finally found the tools to easily recalibrate my relationship with alcohol, and had fun doing it, I wanted to help other people do the same.
And for wine and me, it’s a conscious uncoupling (to borrow Goop-speak) rather than a divorce! We can still spend the holidays together…with the kids! I love my wine friends, wine country, shopping at wineries and wine related businesses, staying at wine country hotels, dining at wine-centered restaurants. And I still love wine. I just choose not to drink it today.
So it is with new eyes that I consider what it means to extend truly inclusive hospitality. It means having options comfortably available so that people don’t have to “other” themselves.
I enjoyed shopping at a gift market pop-up at Ponzi Vineyards and was delighted to find a big beautiful water jug filled with fresh citrus alongside self-serve glassware. I also purchased their non-alcoholic sparkling grape juice to take home (which they will also serve in a crystal wine glass to enjoy in their gorgeous tasting room). Roots Wine Company is now making a non-alcoholic CBD-infused canned Sauvignon Blanc grape juice and offers it in their tasting room and on their website. And Raptor Ridge Winery offers a flight of NA beverages made with assorted flavors from Honeybee Lemonade Syrups, a female-owned enterprise in Portland, and presents them in carafes on a beautiful wooden slab tray.
I love sending people to these establishments and look forward to even more options. (Please email me with other options you’ve found in wine country, in Oregon or elsewhere!). On the dining front, I was thrilled to celebrate a milestone birthday at Le Pigeon in Portland and find a “nogroni” and one of the country’s coolest and fastest growing new NA craft beers, Athletic Brewing, on the menu. Non-drinkers want to be part of the ritual. And they have money in their pockets.
There are dozens of reasons someone might not be drinking today. Working on upleveling a business, qualifying for the Boston Marathon, making a baby, rocking Whole 30, or simply paying attention to “what do I need right now” are just a few.
The Sober Curious movement is not going anywhere. In fact, the non-alcoholic segment of the drinks industry is set to grow 10% per year for the next 5 years. An excellent recent article in Seven Fifty Daily cites that Athletic Brewing which makes exclusively NA beer is growing 400%…per month! The NA wine industry is expected to be worth $10 billion by 2027. There is a reason Big Alcohol conglomerates like AB inBev and Diageo, plus brands like Heineken, Budweiser, Guinness and Martini (owned by Bacardi) have invested heavily in NA products.
Younger generations embrace a wellness lifestyle, they want more options for connection and they don’t want to be labeled. These brands understand that there is now a new fluidity to the term sober, and it doesn’t necessarily mean all the time or forever. And that people who aren’t drinking of course mix and mingle with people who do.
We have the opportunity to create comfortable spaces where choosing not to drink, or even just choosing to drink water between glasses of wine, is welcomed and accommodated.
In my tasting room of today, I would offer kombucha or nitro coffee on tap. I’d find space for the spa water and glassware. For events at home, or the school fundraiser, I’d offer a bartender-inspired NA cocktail in sexy glasses that could be spiked or not. I’d make sure the ice chest is filled with cute cans of any of the dozens of exciting non-alcoholic cocktails that are exploding onto the market.
And I’d say again to the non-drinkers, my apologies, for not having had a plan to make you feel part of the celebration.
Cheers to a new energy around normalizing choice and true inclusion.