Producing New Wine Drinkers: Hats Off to Gary V

I'm not a true Vayniac; I don't follow Gary V every day, but he's done something we all need to get better at: producing new wine drinkers.

A friend sent me this link (click here) to the short bio/interview in the New York Times: It is well worth a read.

Not long ago, I was sitting at a luncheon with 22 great minds in the wine industry, and this fervor to produce new wine drinkers was sadly, and noticeably, missing. I'd asked, "Who at this table owns a millennial?" I was greeted with quizzical looks.

I confess, I no longer own a millennial. My boys went off to college, graduated, got jobs, girlfriends and wives (in that order, and sequentially) and are now producing the next generation of wine drinkers. But I do hold loose title to one millennial, my 22-year-old niece Margaret, and we keep in touch via text messaging (she never answers her iPhone anymore and doesn't own a landline phone and rarely deigns to answer email). Margaret is the real thing.

So... Margaret is sitting at the bar in a restaurant and her date goes to the bathroom. My text alert bings, and it says, "Quick Aunt Babs, date in loo, steak + calamari coming, what wine 2 get?"

I do my bit. Value wines for this group. But soon they'll be moving to $15 a bottle consistently in the campus liquor store, and she's been known to use my brother's credit card for $25 a bottle and more.

I just KNOW that somewhere out there, a smart person is going to create an iPhone app for this generation of new wine drinkers, kind of like a Ghostbuster-Who-Ya-Gonna-Call and then the texts will no longer bing on my phone and some edgey guy like Gary V is gonna get really rich.

And more power to that person!

p.s. Gary I love you, and who wouldn't?