![\"Trendsetter\"](\"http:\/\/www.appellationbeer.com\/images\/20080205-beertender.jpg\")
This is a story overtly about wine, so you might not care, and about trends, so you might not care.<\/p>\nThis is a story overtly about wine, so you might not care, and about trends, so you might not care.<\/p>\n
Rather than revisiting the discussion<\/a> about if we want our beer hip<\/em> or sick<\/em> I will simply argue that trends matter because they may determine what’s available for us to drink. After all, hipsters managed to slow the demise of Pabst.<\/p>\n So consider this report last week from the annual Unified Wine and Grape Symposium<\/a> in Sacramento, the largest conference of the year for the U.S. wine business.<\/p>\n The wines you’ll be savoring five years from now are being picked today by enological trendsetters barely old enough to drink.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Is it possible we might substitute the word beer<\/em> for wine<\/em> (and enological<\/em>)?<\/p>\n The story reports that “what they’re looking for \u2013 wines that are quirky, regional, with rich background stories \u2013 isn’t what the mainstream domestic industry seems to be selling today.”<\/p>\n Can you think of a mainstream domestic drinks industry that seems to be struggling with growth?<\/p>\n Go give it a read<\/a>. You may also enjoy the direction of this commentary: When the Young Eat the Rich<\/a>. <\/p>\n You’ll find fodder for both sides of the “extreme beer” debate, for instance, but I’ll leave you with two takeaways:<\/p>\n – SABMiller may not yet have figured out how to wow the Gen Y millennials<\/a>, but is right about their impact. They want products that are handcrafted, unique . . . “authentic.”<\/p>\n – Sommeliers, or Cicerones<\/a>, are important.<\/p>\n And I also have to repeat the final quote of the story: “We way overestimate the knowledge of the American consumer.”<\/p>\n Is he talking about us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a story overtly about wine, so you might not care, and about trends, so you might not care. Rather than revisiting the discussion about if we want our beer hip or sick I will simply argue that trends matter because they may determine what’s available for us to drink. After all, hipsters managed … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beer-wine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-7A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}