I want to start with a confession: I got into the business of wine with no role models. Nobody I aspired to be like. I didn’t know who to aspire to. I simply wasn’t that into it when I got my first job in wine doing a promotional pouring for Saxenburg at the Johannesburg Country Club. I enjoyed guzzling it from time to time, but the only real distinctions I made between wines were the colour, sweetness levels, and whether their corks became blunt force missiles and their bottles ejaculated onto my floor or not. Although my mother does have a story about a 4-year-old me throwing a tear-filled tantrum because I wanted to drink some wine, and I would open a bottle if I had to. (If you want to read that story, let me know and we can peer pressure her to tell it on @virgin_vines). Nonetheless, it is safe to say that this naïveté, has benefited mey (me).
Let me explain.
The world is infantilising millennials and Gen Zs, and I’ve just realised how much this subject matter crumbles my cork. I want to urge people to handle their childhood trauma like proper dysfunctional adults. Have an oopsie baby, or collapse your life with debt. You don’t have to attach an activity to your social gatherings. Sip and paint, game nights, adventure golf (the act of traversing insufferable landscaping while playing the most enraging sport – that definitely is more game than sport – that could only have been invented by the Scots)... They’re social gatherings! Sit on a couch. Ingest an amount of alcohol that brings out your better self, and just talk to people. We are by far and large the most interesting species of living being on this planet.
I understand, the internet wants us to believe that cows are like puppies, and that’s why we shouldn’t butcher and eat them. And that’s cute and everything. But that doesn’t make them more interesting, and secondly, they just aren’t. If not for anything else, but for the fact that if puppies were as delicious as cows are, Woolworths would be stocking Cavalier King Charles espetada and dogs wouldn’t be pets.
But if you want to be this type of person, if your raison d’être is to wear clothing that looks like a larger person's couch rot outfit just to tie it all together with platform combat boots from Starfish Galactica or whatever, and it fills some void in you that could have been easily avoided by a strategically timed hug, then go on and do you. We all have to fill that childhood void somehow, but I think I chose to do it differently.
I filled my void when I joined the wine industry by infantilising how I learn in my career. I try to practice being curious. Sometimes I even fantasise my curiosity. I indulge as a child would, I sample everything, and I let the little things blow my mind. And sometimes it feels like my own little private romance, a way that I spoil myself. Yes, I’m having a private romance with my inner child.
Now I’m not claiming to have original ideas because of this. Like any child in the throes of a finger-in-the-socket learning curb, I am a product of my peers, my triumphs and my mistakes. Every article I read, any tasting note I hear, any piece of content or mouthful of wine I consume influences adversely (or whatever the opposite of adversely is) my identity in this industry. But I do think we need to think about wine differently. So, let’s start with how morosely adult wine is.
Okay boomer
The old-timer rhetoric that believes nothing has to change is becoming increasingly exhausting. Our responsibility is to invoke change. Yes, as a practice, tasting wine for quality should be a cornerstone for anyone who is building a wine list or listing wines on the shelf, but this doesn’t mean the wines we serve should be technically “perfect”. A little bit of Brett on your Chinon won’t send you to an early grave. In fact, if you ask me, that little imperfection, in the right dose, adds character to those wines. And in a world where alternative lifestyles give people a greater sense of community, character seems like something we should prioritise.
That’s not to say that great wine lacks character. Butch’s Fire by Night Chenin Blanc 2025 was so intense this year that it was honestly difficult to drink. But like a scrunch-faced baby to a wedge of lemon, I went back for more. And in that, I found a wine that is now a foundational anchor for how I evaluate quality and complexity in wine. It is a wine that taught me how to taste wine differently. Jurgen Gouws mentioned in a wine pairing dinner that I held with him at Open Bottle that he hates it when people describe wine as interesting. Because it means they have nothing to say. So to avoid that trope, I’ll say: Fire By Night is an exceptional wine. It is salty and robust and oily, but if you’re looking for an easy drinker, it is not that. And it shouldn’t be. It is one of those wines that require you not to drink it. And you can do that in two different ways. You can either wait 5 years till the wine has softened and the effects of micro-oxidation have made it more friendly, or you can wrestle with it in its youth. This is where my inner child yelps in glee. Challenging to drink wine is not a bad thing; it just means I have to spend more time tasting. More time picking apart the fantastically complex layers that give it character. In its current state, it is an experience to taste, not a wine to drink. And it is this level of curiosity I’d like to build in my customer base. A level of curiosity I’d encourage anyone who likes wine to indulge in.
But it’s not about super exclusivity and astronomical price points that Chris Alheit's wines generally demand. I feel the same way about Stars in the Dark from Minimalist. A Cape Agulhas Syrah that is packed with black olive and lightly smoked young plum. It is an austere and tightly packaged wine that veers a considerable distance from the “typical” Stellenbosch expressions of this grape. If you’re looking for baking spices and ripe purple fruit, this is not the wine you want to drink. But if you’d like to taste something that is grown in South Africa but has flavour profiles probably more suited to the Northern Rhône, then this wine is where you invest your curiosity.
The point I’m trying to make is that “uncomfortable” drinking experiences are the “experience” in drinking experience. Those of us who have settled with consistency in our lives are missing out. Yes, there is a place for it. Yes, there is a comfort in it. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, soap operas, the VW Polo. But remember that nothing is stopping you from dipping your fries into a McFlurry, or adding rum and lime to your Coke, missing an episode to come back and be confused that your favourite character is now a witch, or bedazzling your Polo with a fresh set of BBS wheels. Because making different choices is free.
Wine knowledge is not really the point
I saw a post on Instagram that read “being into wine is now cringy”. Ironically enough, I’m happy about that. It means that enough people are enjoying and exploring wine to the point that it’s starting to annoy non-wine-drinkers. To me, that means we have a growing consumer base. A new wave of curious people flexing their wine discoveries to unwilling parties. Let’s continue to grow that enthusiasm. The same way the first Fast and Furious movie brought car culture to the mainstream and continued to build it through what seems to be dozens of increasingly cringy movies. We should be making wine mainstream. We should be debating our differences; we should be sticking our fingers in sockets and taking second bites out of lemon slices. At the end of the day, we live in a wine producing country (a damn good one at that). Why shouldn’t our enthusiasm be cringy? Build the curiosity and enthusiasm, and knowledge will come.
The “experts” think it’s their knowledge that will save this industry. But there are simply too few of them to consume enough wine to sustain it. My consumption is probably surpassing my expertise, and that’s where our consumer base needs to be too. Not that I’m promoting alcoholism, because we know that there is a problem there already, but we should promote tasting and experiencing new things as activity outside of just drinking. Promote experiences over bulk wine sales. Create the itch, and the consumers will scratch.