P(doom): What’s the Real Existential Threat to Wine?

Are we losing drinkers by degrees? Or about to be banned overnight?

So which is the wine trade’s most existential “Extinction Level Event¹”? Are we going to get banned out of existence? Or will wine simply fade into irrelevance?

Or maybe this is a daft question. Maybe we’re comparing apples with oranges. And both merit equal, if different attention.

For those wondering what I’m on about let me bring you up to speed. Two people I know, have worked with, respect hugely (and therefore will treat with due respect) have made powerful cases about the future challenge facing the wine business.

Felicity Carter has done the wine and wider drinks world a powerful service in reporting on the rise of neo-prohibitionist organisations. Particularly in how they have gained a foothold in organisations like the United Nations. The picture she paints is a worrisome one.

Paul Mabray has been a voice keen to stress that the downturn in alcohol sales has not hit all alcohol equally. Wine is suffering in a way that beer and spirits are not. It’s clear that all is not well in the wine kingdom in a unique and distinctive way to other categories.

There’s a human tendency to binary oppositions. And forgive me if I’ve caricatured what they say into as a sort of either-or dichotomy. If I have it’s because I hear a lot of people starting to slide into either-or entrenched positions.

And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Each of these things is not like the other thing

An internecine conflict within the wine world helps nobody right now. Especially as both these threats are valid, and important. Albeit in unequal ways.

Let me explain.

Declining sales in the wine category is visible, progressive, and democratic. We can see it for ourselves. Just look up the graphs. The decline is happening bit-by-bit and gets worse month-by-month. And the decline is the result of people - often young, sometimes old - who are willingly walking away from wine.

Why? That’s what we need to work out. But I’ll chance my arm and say that we’ve not done a very good job of making wine relevant to everyday life in the way that beer and spirits have done . Especially in craft beer and cocktails.

But prohibition works differently. It is hidden, ideological, and seismic. Until Felicity started reporting on it, most in the drinks business were unaware of the influence of neo-prohibitionists in NGO’s and bodies lobbying government. Neo-prohibitionists aren’t doing what they do because there’s some broad groundswell of anti-alcohol sentiment among the general public that needs representatives². They are driven by an ideological fervour. And they want to ban alcohol whether the rest of us want them to or not.

Importantly, prohibition will not be progressive. It will be seismic. Like those sayings about old age and bankruptcy, it will happen “gradually, and then all of a sudden”. Pressure will grow underground. Indeed it is already growing. Unseen. Deliberately hidden. So that one day we will be happily drinking. And the next we are not allowed to. This is not the sort of change that comes by degrees. It comes by statute, or regulation, on a specific day.

And like a teenage boy with a smartphone waking up to the Online Safety Act… you find your world has changed forever.

The long march through the institutions

If you want to know how this sort of thing works - and who wrote the playbook - I commend to you an old post on Rudi Dutschke, the revolutionary who came up with the notion of The Long March Through the Institutions.

Fighting “the long march” means exposing the tactics of neo-prohibitionists and making clear their ideological and undemocratic fervour.

But fighting gradual decline means doing our job better. It means making wine relevant to modern life in the way that craft beer has made made beer relevant. And the way that cocktails have boosted previously unfashionable products like gin, cognac, and tequila. I’m far from alone in trying to figure out the best ways to do this. That’s much of what this Substack is for. There is no bigger issue facing wine right now.

Alongside the small but catastrophic possibility that we won’t be able to make and sell wine at all.

But which threat is the more serious?

In April and May 1453 Ottomans laid siege to Constantinople. Legend says that the city’s scholars spent the time debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Today indifference and ideology lay siege to the gates of wine. Debating which of them is the worse enemy makes us Constantinople’s “scholars”.

We can’t even measure their threat in the same way.

The superforecaster in me measures the risk from indifference as a Bayesian probability. Let’s ask a SMART question. “What is the risk of a phylloxera-level crisis that puts a plurality of people in the wine business out of work in the next ten years?” There are scores of factors to consider, but if pushed I’d put it at 25%. Or “what is the risk of a more modest crisis of oversupply that puts a 20% or more people in the wine business out of work in the next ten years?” On this one I’m currently at 50%.

Who are the people who will survive? It’ll be the few that are tackling the problems seriously now - as Paul Maybray advocates. And those who were lucky enough to be in categories like prosecco and Provençal-style rosé in the last few years that have been plucked out of the hat of chance to be wines-of-the-moment. But either way, there’s an element of luck and everyone needs to be working hard to be on the right side of a visible, and deeply problematic decline.

But also, bear in mind we could ask a more positive question. Like “what is the chance that wine will bounce back and we’ll see modest market growth in all major markets in the next ten years?” Right now I’m probably less than 10% on this one. With progressive change you can predict both ways.

But prohibition is all-or-nothing. The best way to measure it is like the P(doom) of AI researchers. “What is the probability of existentially catastrophic outcomes - a doomsday scenarios - as a result of prohibition in the next ten years?”

For most of my career the risk of an alcohol prohibition doomsday has been <1%. The last few years it probably hovered at 2%. Felicity’s reporting puts me today at 8%. You may disagree. But I think there is a small, but significant, chance the drinks trade will be wiped out by prohibition in the next ten years. I am of the view that the risk has grown significantly in the last five years.

Both are problems. Both are different. Both need our attention.

Together that means I think there is a 25% chance that most of the wine business - particularly serving the broader, mass market - will face a crisis in the next ten years… if we do not get our act together. I am of the view that there’s a 50/50 chance at least a fifth of the business faces a crisis over that period. Again, if we do not get our act together. We need to tackle that.

I’m also of the view that there is a roughly 8% chance that we will face an existential crisis through prohibition over the same period.

One hurts some of us, and is more likely. The other destroys us all and is less likely. They’re both shit games of poker. Fortunately they’re both games where we can affect the odds. By doing what we do better, more openness to change, and more innovation. Or working with campaigning bodies, and lobbying people in power.

The word “internecine” is derived from Latin: internecinus. It’s is rooted in inter- meaning “between” or “among”, and necare meaning “to kill”. The literal foundation of the term is “killing among/between”. Mutual destruction.

Internecine conflict has a P(doom) of 100%.

1. Eagle-eyed readers will note that the cover photo for this piece is the album cover of Extinction Level Event by Busta Rhymes. The track “This Means War” features the late Ozzy Osborne and serves here as a tribute to the great Brummie rocker. Gimme Some More was the most popular track on the album at the time although my favourite is perhaps the more melodic breaks of Tear da Roof Off.

2. I’m going to distinguish the trends to “wellness” and healthier living from prohibitionism here. Yes, there’s some crossover. And I suspect that’s a link encouraged by those who - for ideological reasons - want to encourage. But read Felicity’s reporting and it’s clear this isn’t a movement driven by people who like yoga, gluten-free pasta, and oat mild lattes.