From collecting to selecting. The new rules of wine status

Wine snobbery is dead. Long live wine snobbery.

There's a paradox at the heart of wine.

Wine's great article of faith is that we must rid it of wine snobbery. Sometimes we call this "demystifying" wine. Or the "democratisation" of wine. But they’re the same thing.

The problem (and paradox) is that wine's original sin is that you can never get rid of wine snobbery. Or at the very least, you can never rid wine drinking of its unique ability to signal messages about status. Which is the same thing. From Barefoot Merlot to Petrus, the wine we drink says something about us. Even if we don’t want it to.

What has changed over time is how that status signalling works. How it manifests itself. And for anyone who makes wine, or sells it, markets it, or communicates about it, it's vital to understand wine's relationship to status. Especially how it’s changed.

It’s possible that your view of wine snobbery and status is tied up with people talking about Parker points, their large collections, or wanging on with complex tasting notes, and dropping fancy names. These people still walk among us. But not for long. The new wine snobbery looks very different.

What are the new rules of status in wine? How has the signalling power of wines changed? And how can you turn that knowledge into more sales, of more profitable wines, to more people?