Finally, a breath of fresh air

Finally, a breath of fresh air

"The wine crisis is a crisis of discovery"

Introduction:

This week an article by Jason Wilson and Caroline Lamb on their "white papers" could not leave me indifferent, because it is sometimes nice not to feel alone in your crusade against misinformation around the world of wine and its myths. Here is a concise summary of this article, and the reasons why I have chosen with certainty what is the mission of my opinions.

"The Wine Crisis" is a Crisis of Discovery: A White Paper

August 18, 2026 (abstract of the article)

The wine industry is undoubtedly going through a difficult period. In the United States, consumption has reached its lowest level in twenty years, while the explanations are multiplying: supposed lack of interest among the younger generations, health concerns, the rise of a neo-prohibitionist discourse, competition from other drinks and cannabis, inflation and a significant increase in the price of bottles. In addition, there are structural problems such as overproduction, behavioral changes and the consequences of climate change. However, according to Jason Wilson and Caroline Lamb, continuing to repeat that "wine is in crisis" no longer allows us to move forward. We must now look for solutions. So the authors propose another reading: the real wine crisis would be above all a crisis of discovery. There is still a large core of passionate consumers, curious and ready to buy quality wines. Yet, paradoxically, the industry seems to be moving away from these consumers by focusing its efforts on those who have little or no interest in wine. This situation is the result of several years of "demystification". By wanting to make wine ever simpler and more accessible, the industry has gradually erased precisely what constitutes its appeal: its diversity, its depth, its history and its complexity. Any in-depth explanation now risks being considered elitist or "snobby".

This simplification would also have favored standardized industrial wines, supported by powerful groups and presented as quality wines, to the detriment of small artisanal producers. At the same time, critics, influencers, sommeliers, specialized media and distributors are losing their traditional ability to create demand.

For Wilson and Lamb (and I agree), the future lies in "discovery wines"

We need to recreate mechanisms that allow curious consumers to meet unknown producers, grape varieties, regions and styles. It is no longer a question of simplifying wine at all costs, but of making people want to explore it, understand it and talk about it again.

My understanding explained:

Why do consumers in New England prefer imported wines over those produced in the United States?

This preference of New England consumers for foreign wines can be explained by a combination of cultural, economic and structural factors. Firstly, the region has a historical attachment to European culture, reinforced by the influence of French and Italian gastronomy in cities such as Boston, which gives European wine a symbolic capital based on centuries of tradition and prestigious appellations such as Bordeaux or Chianti, etc. Secondly, there is a major structural obstacle, the US three-tier system, which makes interstate shipping considerably more difficult for small producers, while European importers benefit from long-standing distribution networks and volumes that allow for competitive prices. Economically, the low volumes of small American estates force them to sell at a higher price, which pushes consumers, at the same price, to favor an imported wine perceived as a safer value. This dynamic is reinforced by the menus of East Coast restaurants, which have long favored French and Italian wines, thus establishing a lasting habit and legitimacy. Finally, a social factor comes into play. Ordering a foreign wine can be perceived as more elegant than choosing a local wine that is still little known, regardless of its actual quality. However, this trend is starting to change, driven by the farm-to-table movement and a growing curiosity for more local products, even if this interest is still marginal in the face of the persistent appeal of foreign wines.

The problem of inter-state distribution

This is probably the most structuring factor. The United States, including the state of Massachusetts, operates with a three-tier system inherited from Prohibition. This system is the legal way of organizing the sale of alcohol in the United States, put in place almost a hundred years ago (1933). It is based on a mandatory separation between three actors:

The producer (winemaker, brewer, distiller) who makes the wine, beer or alcohol, but in principle does not have the right to sell it directly to the final consumer (with exceptions, such as sale on the property or certain direct sales depending on the state).

The distributor/wholesaler who is the obligatory intermediary. The producer must sell their wine to an authorized distributor in each state, who then takes care of bringing it into the commercial channels (restaurants, wine merchants, supermarkets) of that state.

Then the retailer who finally sells to the consumer (wine shop, supermarket, restaurant, bar).

Why does this system exist?

Originally, the idea was to prevent a single player (such as a large producer) from controlling the entire chain, from the manufacturer to the consumer, as was sometimes the case before Prohibition, which had encouraged abuses. We also wanted to allow each state to keep fiscal and regulatory control over the alcohol sold on its territory.

The impact of a very current reality

Practical consequence for small producers
A small American estate must convince a distributor to represent it in each state where it wants to be sold. Since distributors have an interest in favoring large volumes (which are more profitable for them), small producers often have difficulty obtaining this representation, especially far from home, hence the difficulty of breaking into the East Coast. So, a small producer who produces 1000 to 5000 cases per year is simply not of interest to large distributors, whose logistics are designed for much larger volumes. As a result, these wines almost never make it onto the shelves in Massachusetts.

A foreign wine importer, on the other hand, has established national distribution networks for decades.

Direct-to-consumer shipping laws

Each State has its own rules about sending wine directly from a producer to a consumer. Some states are very restrictive or prohibit the reception of wine from producers outside their licensed distribution network altogether. This means that a small estate in Texas or Michigan can have a tremendous amount of difficulty, legally, selling directly to someone in Massachusetts or Vermont. Whereas an imported wine, once it enters the American market via an importer, circulates much more freely. In addition, in Massachusetts, a new 2015 law (effective January 2015, codified in G.L. c. 138, §19F) removed the production cap, but now restricts direct-to-consumer deliveries in our state to 12 cases per year per customer (no more than 2.38 U.S. gallons per case), but with no limit on the total size of the producer's production as before.

The cost of land transportation
Bringing wine from California or Washington state to the East Coast is expensive in land transportation (often more expensive, in the end, than sea freight from Europe for large volumes). The demand for these imported wines by our local distributors does not have the critical size to amortize these logistics costs, which drives up the final price at the retailer.

Lack of visibility and national notoriety
Apart from a few well-known regions (Napa, Sonoma, Willamette Valley in Oregon, Finger Lakes in New York State), most small American producers remain unknown to the general public outside their state. A wine merchant or sommelier in Boston will have an easier time selling a bottle of Burgundy or Tuscany, whose name immediately evokes something to the customer, than a wine from a small estate in Missouri or Virginia that no one knows.

Many small American wineries, producing in small quantities and facing high labor and land costs, have to sell their bottles at prices that put them in direct competition with well-known European wines that are already established in the collective imagination. For the same price, the consumer often goes for the "known" value.

The segmentation of the American wine market itself
Californian production dominates the image of "American wine" to such an extent that small producers in other states (Virginia, Michigan, Texas, Colorado, Vermont, New Mexico, etc.) suffer from an image deficit, because they are neither perceived as part of the large established Californian market, nor as having the aura of European wines. They are a bit stuck between the two.

Atypical grape varieties and the consumer's learning curve

Many small producers, especially in the Midwest or Northeast, work with hybrid or little-known grape varieties (Marquette, Vidal Blanc, La Crescente, etc.) adapted to their climate. Consumers familiar with the names of better-known grape varieties are sometimes reluctant to try a wine they don't know the name of, which again favors wines that are foreign to classic grape varieties.

The new reality

But if the low production volume of small American artisanal producers prevents them from reaching the shelves of the East Coast, unlike imported wines which benefit from established circuits, their guarantees of quality and their integrity in ethical practices mean that today their quality-price ratio is actually much higher than that of imported wines at the same price and sometimes even at a lower price.

"The future therefore lies in discovery wines"

Jason Wilson and Caroline Lamb The White Paper

The crazy challenge of a French Sommelier* who promotes wines from American producers in the heart of Massachusetts

Jason Wilson and Caroline Lamb's formula touches on a much deeper change for me than the simple taste for original bottles. It suggests that the current wine crisis is not just a consumption, price or generational crisis. It is also a crisis of curiosity and of connection between the consumer and the wine. For decades, a large part of the wine trade has been built around reassuring landmarks of prestigious appellations, international grape varieties, critics' notes, recognized brands and established hierarchies. This system works perfectly for the consumer who already knows what he is looking for, but it works much less well for those who are entering the world of wine today and want to be surprised, to learn, to tell something to their friends or simply to feel that a bottle has a special story.

The discovery wine reverses this logic

We no longer start from the question: "Which well-known bottle can I buy?" but rather: "What can I discover today that I didn't know yesterday?"

It can be an unexpected grape variety, an emerging region, a forgotten historic vineyard, a producer working two hectares, a wine from regenerative agriculture, a new interpretation of a familiar grape variety, or simply a bottle capable of provoking a conversation. This is probably where Wilson and Lamb's thinking becomes particularly important: the value of tomorrow's wine may lie more in the experience of its discovery than in its previous prestige, and for new generations of consumers, this completely changes the role of the wine merchant, the sommelier and even the producer. They are no longer just prescribers who explain what is "good" or "great". They become curators; transmitters capable of creating paths of discovery.

This idea is directly in line with the model developed by Bonde Fine Wine

Offering only eco-responsible American artisan producers means voluntarily placing the customer in a territory where his usual references are fewer. A very small producer of an unknown Cabernet Sauvignon from California, a Gamay from Virginia, a Mencía produced in Oregon or a Pinot Noir from a historic vineyard on the North Coast of Sonoma does not automatically benefit from the commercial power of Bordeaux, Burgundy or Champagne. So you have to create discovery before you can create desire. And this is precisely what could constitute one of the new economic drivers of wine.

The discovery wine transforms an apparent weakness "no one knows this bottle" into: "no one knows this bottle yet", and this nuance is fundamental. It shifts the value of recognition to curiosity, from label to history, from status to experience. In a world where almost everything is immediately accessible, compared and evaluated online, wine retains something rare, and that is the possibility of a real sensory surprise.

Thus, we can go further by stating that "the future of wine may not lie only in the production of different wines, but in our ability to rebuild around them the pleasure of seeking, tasting, understanding and transmitting".

This is precisely why a small specialist shop like Bonde Fine Wine can sometimes play a disproportionate cultural role. Because it no longer simply sells bottles, it organizes the meeting between a wine that is still unknown and the person likely to like it.

So, at Bonde Fine Wine, Jason Wilson and Caroline Lamb's phrase "The future is therefore through discovery wines" almost resonates as a validation of the mission that Bertil Jean-Chronberg has been pursuing for more than three decades and publicly since the opening of the boutique in July 2021.

My choice, your choice

Bonde's choice to present only American wines from artisanal producers committed to an eco-responsible approach was never intended as a simple commercial specialization. It is based on a deeper conviction, because the future of wine will depend less on the repetition of already known references than on our ability to give back to the consumer the desire to discover. This is precisely what I am trying to do in Bonde. Rather than building a selection around the most famous appellations, the most visible brands or the bottles that the customer can already identify, I deliberately choose producers who are often unknown, regions that are still little explored, unexpected grape varieties and wines whose value lies more in their identity, their origin and their approach than in their notoriety. In this vision, the unknown is not a commercial handicap:

It becomes the starting point of the experience

Bonde's role is to create the link between these winegrowers and the consumer. Each bottle becomes an opportunity to tell the story of a place, an agricultural philosophy, a personality, sometimes even another way of imagining American wine. So for Bonde, the wine merchant is no longer simply the one who sells what the customer asks, but rather he becomes the one who allows them to discover what they might never have thought of asking. This is also why Bertil chose a particularly difficult path in Massachusetts, because it would have been much simpler to build Bonde around Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Napa or the great international references. But that would have been at odds with my vision, because we exist precisely to show what remains invisible in the American wine landscape.

This philosophy also transforms my relationship with the customer

You don't just come to Bonde to buy a bottle: you come to taste, compare, ask questions, understand and sometimes question your own certainties. Wine then becomes an experience of discovery rather than a simple consumer product, because for me opinions are the very meaning of our existence. This is probably where Wilson and Lamb's phrase comes into its own when compared to Bonde: if the future of wine lies in discovery wines, then Bonde's mission is to build the places, conversations, and experiences that make that discovery possible. For me, the real challenge is not only to promote small eco-responsible American producers, but to try to change the way we look at American wine, and to show that beyond the brands and regions already established, there is a new generation of signature wines, deeply linked to their territories and those who produce them. In this sense, Bonde fine wine is a wine merchant and a place where we do not simply seek to follow the evolution of the wine market, but from the beginning to participate in the research and evolution of its transformation.

Conclusion

At a time when consumers still too often associate the quality of wine with the reputation of an appellation or the prestige of a European origin, the reality of the market deserves to be reconsidered. Many American wines from small artisan producers, working with high standards, precision and a true environmental conscience, today offer a remarkable level of quality while remaining, in many cases, less expensive than European wines of comparable category. This is precisely where Bonde Fine Wine's mission comes into its own: Defending these producers is not just about promoting another vision of American wine; it is also a question of demonstrating that there is a new generation of wines here in the United States capable of bringing together identity, quality, commitment and value. In a context where prices in many historic European regions have risen sharply and where the impact of US taxation policies tends to distort the real value of imported wines, some American artisan wines now offer particularly convincing value for money. More and more often, they are even significantly cheaper than their European equivalents, without giving up the singularity, the expression of the terroir or the quality. My vision is therefore based on a simple conviction: the future of wine will not only be guided by the most famous appellations, but also by the consumer's ability to discover producers who offer more meaning, more personality and, often, more wine for the price paid. This is perhaps where Bonde's real challenge also becomes his greatest opportunity: To make it clear that a great wine does not have to be European, famous or expensive to deserve to be discovered. So, in a market where notoriety and prestige too often continue to dictate our choices, are we really ready to judge a wine for what it is rather than for what its label represents?

*Short bio of this French Sommelier:

Bertil Jean-Chronberg is a French-American sommelier with more than forty years of experience in wine and hospitality. Based in the Boston area for more than twenty-five years, he participated in several emblematic projects of the Quebec and Boston gastronomic scenes before founding Bonde Fine Wine in Cambridge in 2021. Finalist in the ASI-Sopexa competition in 1996, he is now developing an approach to wine based on discovery, education and transmission. Initially specializing in French wines and spirits, he has gradually broadened his field of expertise to devote more than thirty years to the knowledge and promotion of American wines from artisanal producers committed to eco-responsible practices, throughout the United States. This dual culture, European by his training and North American by his career, now nourishes his vision of wine and Bonde's mission: to discover another wine-growing America, more artisanal, more committed and still largely unknown.