Pour You

Restaurants have been managing drink consumption badly for decades... and it’s starting to show up everywhere.

Not just on wine lists. In vineyards. In distribution. In the way people talk about alcohol itself.

The industry keeps telling itself the problem is demand. Younger people. Health trends. Cannabis. Take your pick.

That’s lazy.

The real problem is structural... restaurants broke the habit loop.

Wine used to be normal.

You sat down... you ordered a bottle... nobody overthought it. It was part of dinner, not a decision event. Not a negotiation. Not a small financial commitment disguised as a casual choice.

Now it is.

A $120 bottle sits in this weird dead zone. Too expensive to order casually... not special enough to feel like a celebration. So people hesitate. Or they default to cocktails. Or they opt out entirely.

That’s not a cultural shift. That’s a pricing and format failure.

Cocktails didn’t win because they’re better.

They won because they’re easier.

You can spend $20... get something designed, consistent, personal... and move on. No regret. No group decision. No risk.

Wine, on the other hand, asks you to commit. Financially and socially. And if you get it wrong... you sit with it for the rest of the meal.

So people stopped playing.

What replaced it is worse.

Restaurants now rely on fewer people buying more expensive bottles. Concentrated spending instead of distributed participation. One person orders a $300 bottle... two people drink nothing.

From a spreadsheet point of view... it works.

From a cultural point of view... it’s a disaster.

Because frequency is what builds taste. And taste is what builds future demand.

I had a moment last spring in Amsterdam.

I got talked into a pour of Louis XIII. White gloves. Baccarat crystal. The whole thing. It cost a couple hundred bucks.

I didn’t walk out wanting to buy a $5,000 bottle.

But I did it again.

And then again.

And then I spent about three grand on cognac that summer.

That’s how categories grow. Not through one big purchase... but through repeatable, high-quality access.

Wine doesn’t do this.

Or at least... it doesn’t do it well enough.

We have the technology now. Coravin, inert gas systems, proper storage. You can open almost anything and preserve it. You can turn a $600 bottle into ten $60 decisions.

But restaurants are still thinking in bottle terms.

They’re protecting the idea of the big sale... instead of building the habit that leads to ten smaller ones.

Here’s the shift.

Stop thinking about wine as a product you sell per table.

Start thinking about it as an experience you sell per visit.

Better yet... across visits.

Imagine a restaurant that says:

This month... we are pouring four exceptional wines. Large formats. Properly stored. Properly presented. $40 to $70 a glass. They are here all month... until they’re gone.

You come in on a Tuesday... you try one.

You come back next week... you have it again.

Now you recognize it. Now you trust it. Now you start building a relationship with it.

That’s the missing piece.

Restaurants keep optimizing for tonight.

Maximize the check. Push the bottle. Capture the margin.

But the real opportunity is obvious once you see it.

Turn premium consumption into a repeat behavior.

Make luxury accessible without making it cheap.

Create moments people can come back to... not just remember.

Because right now... the industry is doing the opposite.

It’s extracting as much as it can from the people who already know.

And quietly losing everyone else.

Cocktails didn’t steal the market.

Wine gave it away.

The fix isn’t complicated.

Lower the commitment.
Maintain the quality.
Repeat the experience.

Call it what you want. It fix it or all I can say about your future… Poor You.