Winemakers On Fire, Issue #126

HAS THE WINE INDUSTRY LOST ITS WAY?

A Refounding Manifesto for Wine CEOs

Every January, experts publish predictions. Lists of trends, forecasts, market analyses—mostly worthless, always forgotten by February.

I'm not interested in predictions. I'm interested in positioning.

And here's what perfect positioning requires: knowing who you are before you decide where you're going. Because the wine industry's crisis isn't about tariffs, generational preferences, or climate change—though those matter. It's about something more fundamental.

We've forgotten who we are.

Not forgotten how to make wine. Not forgotten how to sell it, market it, or distribute it. We've forgotten the foundational character that made wine matter in the first place: the capacity to create trust, forge connection, build belonging, and spark conversation.

This erosion isn't sudden. It's institutional drift—accumulated decisions that seemed rational in isolation but have, cumulatively, pulled us away from our core identity. 

The result? An industry increasingly indistinguishable from any other consumer packaged goods category, competing on price and convenience while wondering why younger generations choose spirits, cocktails, and literally anything else.

What follows isn't a prediction. It's a framework for wine CEOs ready to do different work: recovering enduring truths and reinterpreting them for a changed world.

Call it refounding.

We've Optimised for Everything Except What Actually Matters

Walk into most tasting rooms, and what do you find? Not gathering spaces designed for conversation, but transaction centres optimised for throughput. The script is rehearsed. The experience is standardised. The goal is to move people from tasting to purchase as efficiently as possible.

We've automated the soul out of the experience.

The same drift appears in how we measure success. Volume metrics. Distribution breadth. Award counts. Discount velocity. Compensation structures that incentivise short-term sales over long-term relationships. Performance reviews that prioritise quarterly revenue over customer retention. Strategic planning that focuses on market share rather than meaning share.

Here's the irony: we measure and reward exactly the behaviours that are killing us.

Digital was supposed to restore relationships and connections. Instead, most wineries use relationship technology for transactional purposes—email blasts about discounts, social media posts about awards, e-commerce platforms optimised for conversion rates.

The evidence is everywhere. Global consumption declining in mature markets. Younger consumers choosing literally anything else. And when they do drink wine, they approach it transactionally—less loyally, less reverently, and more interchangeably.

They're not rejecting wine because they don't like fermented grapes. They're rejecting what wine has become.

Wine's Purpose Isn't Filling Bottles—It's Filling a Specific Human Need

Wine isn't in the business of alcohol. Wine is in the business of human connection.

The enduring need we serve isn't for fermented grape juice at a specific price point. It's for conviviality, ritual, shared meaning, and belonging around the table. For the portal to place and time that wine uniquely provides. For the conversation catalyst that transforms a meal into a memory.

This need persists across generations, cultures, and technological disruption. People will always crave moments of genuine connection. Wine's role was—and should be—facilitating those moments.

Wine's distinctive character rests on four foundational pillars:

Trust is the foundation. Wine asks people to trust the producer's integrity, trust that what's in the bottle matches what's on the label, and trust that the story being told is true. This trust is hard-won and easily broken. When absent, wine becomes just another commodity where price is the only differentiator.

Connection is what trust enables. Wine creates connection between people and place, between drinkers and makers, and between those gathered around a table. That connection transforms wine from product into portal.

Belonging is what connection creates at scale. Wine clubs aren't just distribution mechanisms; they're tribes. Wine regions aren't just geographic designations; they're identities people claim. Wine dinners aren't just meals; they're rituals of inclusion.

Conversation is both the expression and renewal of the other three pillars. Wine gives people something worth talking about. The story of place. The winemaker's choices. The memory this bottle evokes. When conversation dies, the entire system weakens.

These four pillars don't exist independently. They form an integrated system where each reinforces the others. Trust enables connection. Connection creates belonging. Belonging generates conversation. Conversation deepens trust.

This is who we are when we're functioning as designed. Not producers of alcoholic beverages. Not managers of agricultural commodities. Creators and stewards of trust, connection, belonging, and conversation.

Five Questions Expose Whether You've Drifted or Refounded

Can you describe why your business exists without mentioning wine? If not, you're defining yourself by what you make, not why you matter. That's the first step toward commoditization. Purpose transcends product.

If anyone acquired your brand tomorrow, what would be impossible to replicate? If the answer is "nothing" or "our vineyard sites," your capability isn't distinctive enough to survive disruption. Your moat should be systematically embedded character, not dirt.

Look at your last ten strategic decisions—how many strengthened trust, connection, belonging, and conversation? How many were rationalised as necessary compromises? The ratio tells you whether you're refounding or drifting.

Ask your frontline staff whether the culture supports authentic connection or pushes them toward transaction and efficiency. Their answer reveals the truth your leadership metrics can't see.

If your current leadership leaves tomorrow, would your systems guide replacements toward decisions that strengthen your character? Or would those systems push them toward the same drift you're trying to reverse? Character that isn't encoded eventually erodes.

These questions don't offer comfort. They expose drift, reveal hard truths, and make refounding work visible and urgent. Most wine businesses will struggle to answer them honestly.

But discomfort is the prerequisite for change.

Two Paths Diverge—and the Industry Will Divide Along This Choice

The first path is continuation. Keep competing on price. Keep chasing distribution. Keep measuring success by volume and awards. Keep believing better marketing or smarter discounts will restore what's been lost.

This path is familiar, rational, and leads to irrelevance. Not immediate collapse—drift rarely produces that. Instead, slow hollowing out. Margins that never recover. Customers who never commit. A persistent sense that something essential has been lost but can't be named or recovered.

The second path is refounding. It begins with recognition: we've drifted. It continues with excavation: recovering the enduring truths that define wine's purpose. It deepens through an honest examination of the five questions. It manifests through systematic redesign: encoding character into culture, strategy, operations, governance, and compensation.

This path requires courage to recognise drift without a crisis forcing your hand. Humility to value what came before. Patience to do the work. Discipline to embed character into systems that outlast any leader.

Most wine businesses won't choose this path. It's too hard. Too uncertain. Too much work for returns that can't be easily quantified.

Which means choosing: A smaller segment will successfully refound—businesses that compete on distinctive character rather than commodity attributes, nearly impossible to replicate. The larger segment will complete its drift into commodity—interchangeable products competing on price, struggling to maintain relevance.

Both will claim to be "the wine industry." But they'll be fundamentally different enterprises.

The Work Begins with a Choice You Make Today

This manifesto has given you language for what you've sensed but couldn't name. A framework for understanding why conventional transformation fails. Diagnostic questions to assess where you stand.

What it can't give you is the decision.

You can return to familiar patterns—optimising operations, pursuing growth, hitting targets—telling yourself the industry's challenges are beyond your control.

Or you can begin refounding. Not tomorrow. Not after the next quarterly review. 

Now.

Because character erosion accelerates. Every day you operate from misalignment deepens the drift. Every compensation cycle that rewards volume over relationship depth encodes character loss more deeply. Every strategic decision made without asking "Does this strengthen our foundational pillars?" makes refounding harder.

Leadership is stewardship of character. And character, once lost, doesn't restore itself through better tactics.

It restores through recognition, courage, and disciplined redesign.

The wine industry has lost its way because it’s forgotten who it is.

Your business can refound. But it requires something most CEOs avoid: the courage to remember who you were before success taught you to forget.

Which path are you on?

Acknowledgment

This manifesto draws on research from the Yale School of Management's Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management, particularly the work "When Companies Forget Who They Are: The Work of Refounding" by Jon Iwata. The framework of institutional drift, enduring needs, and distinctive capabilities has been adapted here for the wine industry's specific challenges.

Mike Carter is a Wine Futurist based in Cape Town, South Africa, who believes the path to future success isn't found in perfect predictions but in perfect positioning.