Areni's Trends, Worries and Wish Lists for 2024

Welcome to the Aurene Global Podcast. Aurene is a global research and action institute for the future of Fine Wine. In this series we bring you conversations with thought leaders in and adjacent to the Fine Wine world to discuss how we as an ecosystem can ensure the collective future of Fine Wine. Hello everyone and welcome to this very special episode of Aurene Global in Conversation. I am your host, Pauline Vigare and before we go further let me wish you all a very happy new year. May 2024 bring you joy, health and of course great wines and great conversations. So it's the first episode of the year and I thought you know it's the perfect moment to dust off our crystal ball and look into the future and explore what we think the next 12 months are holding up for the fine wine industry and of course visualizing what the future might look like is something that we do a lot of here at Aurene but short term perspective is always quite a dangerous exercise and the recent years have proven how quickly predictions can become totally irrelevant and outdated. So I'm not going to take that risk alone and instead of having one guest with me today I actually have three and three very special guests indeed as I am pleased to welcome three key members of the Aurene team. Felicity Carter, hi Felicity, welcome tuning in from Germany, Sarah Phillips all the way from Miami, hi Sarah. Hi and Bolly Hammond tuning in from sunny Barcelona or at least not snowy Barcelona. Hi Bolly, nice and warm here. So all of us are working and evolving in four different wine markets and all of us spend quite a bit of time observing and interacting with both our local and the international wine scene and also we spend quite a lot of time working together and never bored of your insights opinions and views. So we are going to talk about the overall trends that we see happening for fine wine this year but before we do that I just wanted to ask you about your general feeling for this next 12 months and and I was wondering you know in what state of mind you finished 2023 and in what state of mind are you starting this new year and more importantly why. So Felicity do you want to get us started? This is one of these strange years where I really hesitate to make any predictions about the year. I would have said that we were going to go into a recession in 2024 and yet Christmas retail spending was extremely strong in the United States which is the key driver now of the world economy but at the same time we have this wretched situation in the Middle East which might be contained or it might spread and the impact that is having on a whole range of things including particular logistics and shipping could be devastating or it might be solved fairly soon. So I don't know how I'm feeling. What about you? Well it's a bit I guess I spend quite a lot of time thinking about it during the holiday but it's that kind of tipping year where everything can happen it can be good it can be terrible or actually very very bad because to me we are at the end of cycles right one of the things that I discussed quite a lot in November and December is the end of the rebels you know when it comes to fine wine and the classics and all the models that kind of came up in a position to that like natural wines and all those rebellious movements that wanted to create something new in wine. They kind of ended up a lot like fine wine in some ways they ended up being very expensive they ended up being collectible they ended up in the secondary market and they ended up they started as an inclusive movement but they finished to be quite exclusive in some ways so it's like the end of that cycle and I'm really wondering what's next to fine wine because you need those rebellious movements you need those creative movement that goes against the stages quo but it seems that you know natural wine is no longer that and I wonder what's coming next to disturb to you know challenge fine wine in a good way. Polly what about you? Yeah I'm always the cock-eyed optimist right but I feel very positive going into 2024 I see that we have maybe managed our post-COVID PTSD as an industry I think that we've had a lot of uncertainty and I'm not saying that that uncertainty doesn't still exist we can talk about that later but what I notice is with my fine wine clients there is less of a reactive response and much more of a sense of confidence themselves in the direction that they their brands and their segment of the industry are going I say that in contrast to perhaps some of what is happening in other parts of our industry again we can discuss that as we go forward I will say that it's funny one of the things that makes me optimistic is very similar to what you've said Pollyne which is we are simply at a point in dealing with our segments and with our audiences where we're knowing them better I think that when you've got new generations entering the market or entering the consumer space we don't really know what to expect of them and right now you know millennials old hat hopefully we're not still talking about them. Gen Z I think that a lot of the assumptions that were thrown out there have proven to be inaccurate or bad trends from past years and now we can refine what we know about them and how we reach them the other thing is I do want to say leaving me confident is that consumer spending of the audiences that we've been so worried about has not really evintuated the way that again former trends had predicted so on the whole from my little side of the wine world I'm feeling like it's gonna be a great year. Yeah fine wine as a whole category and you know we spend a lot of time defining that category but as a whole category is doing quite well in terms of attracting young people in terms of you know still have a space in the market and there's you know in terms of global feeling I went to an event in Paris in November to actually hear about California and wine maker in Paris that was fun and Ted Lemon that we had the chance to spend a bit of time with in California earlier last year for the thing. Yeah actually talked about the proliferation of party boat and it was explaining that when he started there was only one party boat if you wanted to be the elite of wine there was only one boat going into one direction and if you were not exactly that style exactly that mindset you couldn't go on the boat you know you stayed on the shore and today there's loads of boats and there's loads of party boats they're big party boats they're smaller party boats they go in all kind of directions but the very exciting thing is that I think one of the things that we're gonna continue to see in 2024 is the expansion of fine wine and more and more wine that are calling themselves fine on the market and they will have an audience. And the real thing about that is that it's also going to be a diversity of brands I think that for a long time when we talked about fine wine or we talked about luxury wine it was very much dominated by a kind of traditional brand experience right and what we've seen a lot of this is the three and four years on now from the pandemic experience. Our luxury brands are less afraid of breaking the mold of lining ourselves closer to what we see in the fashion industry for instance where we just have so much that's changed in terms of how we communicate how we present ourselves. Where we're willing to bust out of conditions that our neighbors have set for us for many years. So I think you know not to say that any prediction is going to be global that notion that we have kind of settled into a really good space of ourselves and of our brands in a new marketing or communication world and this is hopefully going to be the sweet spot in the next you know a couple years. Sarah what about you? What's your feeling about 2024? So I mean I would kind of extend on it a number of things that you guys have have said I mean on one hand I think taking a kind of global non-wine specific look at the world it's hard not to be concerned right I mean what's happening in the Middle East it's obviously deeply distressing as well as Ukraine but if you narrow the question to what is you know what's happening in the fine-wine world I think I would share Pauli's optimism you know there are a lot of you know concerning headlines about wine but if you look at where Rwine luck is performing well it's at the top end and I think that's you know where we're having this conversation but I think the other thing is and Pauli touched on this and you touched on this Pauline with your comments about natural wine is we have to be prepared for consumers to continue to surprise us in their choices you know we talk about these kind of large trends you know the search for authenticity low alcohol dry wine health but look one of the big grand successes of this year which I learned about recently have you heard of the Taylor Port challenge? No no did you know this was amazing so there's this $13.45 American wine would Taylor Port wine and it alone I was looking at figures for August this year the 45 wine category jumped by something like 90% of the US just because of sales for this one specific wine kicked off after it went viral on TikTok and so against everything that we think consumers want which is healthy low alcohol dry authentic expensive wines this brand's kind of gone nuts and you know the point of that story is I think just consumers will continue to surprise us and I think what you were all touching on is this sort of sense of the year it had could bring us you know the unexpected and I think we're in quite an exciting place to potentially take advantage of that and at the same time because this is the year of contradiction I think but at the same time yes actually when you talk to fine wine specialist and what's considered a bit more classic in terms of fine wine people tell you the top wines will be fine the established brands will go fine and then everything else will decrease in price on the secondary market because in years of uncertainty people are not adventurous and they go back to what they know which is your Bordos and your Coble of Italians and you know your Coble of Top Burgundy and and that's it. So I guess again I don't think we can address the trends with fine wine. We have to address the trends for fine wines because that diversity means that it's more and more difficult to talk about fine wine as one small category as you were also saying. Poly because there's loads of potty boats, loads of segments, loads of different things, right? Yeah so one thing that we've really noticed that maybe prematurely takes us into some of your further questions is that just like everything we're noticing a huge polarization in the wine markets and so what we're seeing is that anyone who sits in that really cheap and cheerful category gonna go great guns anyone who sits in an established and a true fine or luxury space and I'm using price points as my definition in that going to be completely fine. People in the middle ground we're seeing the people who are in the top you know band of so like what I would describe as the equivalent of the upper middle class not the audiences but the wine brands themselves right that they're really heavily pushing toward achieving luxury or premium status for various reasons that we can or cannot get into and then separate from fine wine what we end up with is this middle band and those are the ones that I have the most concern about because for various reasons it's inappropriate for them to move either up or down our market ladder and so those are the ones that I think are going to be hit hardest by whatever various uncertainties as I'm certain that we're going to discuss will befall us in 2024 but yeah I mean I've seen a lot of brands actively working over the past two years to achieve a luxury or fine as an expensive wine status. Yeah and you can't just decide to be there there's loads of things that you've got to check to get there. You mentioned that the wine while the fine wine segment is more and more polarized than it's not surprising because wine follows society right and as society gets more polarized the wine segments gets more polarized in a way and as you know we've got super rich and less rich people the wine follow the same example I was wondering if there's any other trends like global trends that are happening in the global world. Well first of all just talking about the polarization I think this is also always a feature of uncertain times is that you see a flight to safety and so things which have a track record will always be okay I also think there's been a lot of silliness in the market over the last few years we've seen a lot of you know burgundy would be a good example where we've seen some you know not very good villages where the prices have just become stratospheric and completely out of out of whack with the quality of the wine and I think maybe some of that going back to better pricing is actually just a correction rather than anything else. I think one of the things is the flight to safety I think we'll also see luxury become more discreet that is a typical reaction to uncertain times I think we're going to see a lot of consolidation not just because of economic indicators but also because of the fact that so many people in wine are aging out and they need to they need to move on they may not have somebody to take it over so I think we're going to see a lot of sales and a lot of a lot of opportunity for people who've got money climate change is absolutely making a difference now it's making a difference to what people can produce to how much they can produce and it's also having a dire impact on the insurance market there are many many people especially in places like California that may not be able to produce wine any longer because they can't get the insurance that they need and so in some ways I see that as a positive I think not not for people who are affected by it but I think if anything is going to make people wake up to climate change it's going to be the acturies inside the insurance companies who work out what the real pricing of the risk is and they're going to force people especially people who don't accept climate change to go well actually you know I can't get insured so we're going to see much more white wine I think we'll see white wine into the investment grade market logistics I think is really troubling you know we have the situation in the Red Sea at the moment we also have the lower water inside the sewers can have what the panoramic is that I think it's a sewers can have now what happens during pandemic when shipping sort of flipped over was that this is one of the things that killed the Australian wine industry is that the ships stopped passing by Australia to pick up the wine and a lot of producers and they just went you know from the US to China and that was the only route that was working that's right so so roots are changing and becoming very very very expensive because people have to buy past the Middle East and they have to go around Africa so things are taking a lot more time it's going to be a lot more expensive to pick up wine from places like Australia and New Zealand so I think that's going to South Africa or South Africa so I think that puts or Argentina or anything that's our major trade route yeah so this situation may correct itself but if it doesn't correct itself I think it has the potential to completely up end to the world of wine and not just in a shipping of bulk wine but also the shipping of fine wine to different places in the world you know we've seen during covid one of the things that people really refocused on the local market and they discovered some in places like France you know the upfront of the market discovered that they had a local market for this do you think that's one of the trends that we could see also in 2024 is like Australians selling to Australians it will depend on the geopolitical situation I think people don't necessarily want focus on a local market the world has become so international and open and global that people just want to embrace the diversity that's out there so if it's forced upon people I think they will but I don't think that's people's natural tendency at the moment the other thing which is a bright spot which we've talked about a lot at a really is for the first time ever we're seeing young people enter the fine wine market it's been typically the province and I hear I'm talking about investment grade it's typically been the province of people who are over 40 but what's happening in the last two or three years is people 28 to 40 beginning to enter the market far more women that's usually about 60 40 and what is driving that seems to be technology that there's a gamification of fine wine and people have a lot more transparency around the fine wine market because the apps are allowing it and that transparency is leading to a much wider adoption of wine by a much younger group of people so that's really the bright spot well to link on that and you talked about technology and the rules and we've discussed that with you know auction house in how much the gain like young consumers when they went online completely and everything well one of the other technology that we have discussed a bit but not that much in a reene is AI probably what do you think AI is going to change for us this year? not much not much because the technology is not there actually I say that a little flip link I say that because when right now when people hear AI what does everybody think of we think of chat GPT right we think of a second brain that's doing the work for us and we're not actually thinking about the deeper implications for AI I don't think that we're at a point where this year we're going to see it but I certainly think that we could get to a point where with some of the work that we have around predictions and chemistry that we can start to look at more AI on a production side and also more AI on a reducing the lag between what we think we know and how long it takes to actually produce or get to a point where we can have those items to market but I'm not sitting here pinning my hopes and dreams for my clients on AI I think that there are other things that are tangential to what Felicity has talked about that are going to have a much greater impact yes and one of them well we'll talk about two of them actually that I think we cannot overlook are the knock-on effects of the SVB collapse and all of the other the banks because we have to remember that those wineries have to continue to source funding from somewhere it hasn't been much in the news but that certainly is continuing to happen behind the scenes and that is an enormous financial stressor at a time so can you just maybe for some of our listeners that might not be you know knowing deeply what's happening in the US can you recap what happened with the SVB bank? I'm not a financial analyst Felicity can probably describe it better than I can but what we had of course was we had the failing one of our largest lenders to the wine industry and then summarily we had some of our additional lenders who work heavily within the wine industry also fold or need to sell on that the debt and the loans Felicity you always get the language right on that I always get it wrong you described it perfectly basically the Silicon Valley bank had a run which led to the collapse of the bank but this the critical thing about the Silicon Valley bank was it had a division that was specifically centered on wine because because most most banks don't understand the wine industry because there's not a lot of publicly held data because it's family owned companies but they did understand wine right so so for all of those all of those wineries all those wine businesses that were relying upon Silicon Valley bank or any of the other lenders who were heavily tapped into the wine market you know we heard the stories come and go but we're not hearing the follow on effect of their issues you know do the do the banks who took on those loans want to remain in the alcohol industry do they want to continue supporting you know loans to wine businesses and I think that that is one of those things that we're going to continue to see the financial impact of that and not in a way that is overt so that's one thing that I think that at these four us face brands we can't be dismissive of they all seem to say and similar week signals in Europe about funds of the alcohol industry. And that's one of the things that we've raised in 2019 when one of the biggest Norwegian funds stopped funding any company that had more than 5% and over linked to alcohol. And to Felicity's point, if there's one great thing or positive thing about a crisis or a difficult economy called time, is that it forces us to reexamine profitability and how we make money and how we're going to make it in a sustainable way in the future. And as Felicity said, it might be because of the insurance company, it might be because of the bank and because of where we get the money or how we assure the production that we'll need to think differently, but probably the funding and cash is going to be the key factor of success for 2024. The other thing though that I want to touch upon is distribution. So we can talk about logistics, we can talk about the producers, but what we're seeing is that we are seeing we had the tightening that was allowed by COVID, right? The number of distributors who reduced their lines, reduced their list. And that has been a good excuse for it to stay where it is. It's much harder to get distribution. The requirements for you to get distribution are difficult. The distributors themselves are, I'm not casting aspersions on all distributors, but they are very much in a position where they can lead those terms of engagements. And I don't really know that that's a great thing for our industry. And at the same time, we have, you know, mergers and acquisitions are not just about wind brands. If we look at something like the Croger and Albertsons, is that right? Croger and Albertsons merger and acquisition that was on the plate for 2023 for so long. When we have major mergers and acquisitions within our selling marketplaces, that again has a huge impact that, you know, that just waves throughout our industry. So I think that we do have to, when we're making these predictions, we have to kind of get out of our wine bubble and say, well, what are the other industries that are going to significantly impact us? And to go back to that distribution thing, it's interesting because, you know, when we present the white paper on the definition of fine wine, and we explain fine wine people are like, well, you know, fine wine comes from everywhere. And our fine wine is a truly diverse segment. And every country can produce fine wine. And there's, it's not no longer border and burgundy, which I totally agree with. But the success and the status of fine wine comes with distribution. And if, you know, there's two things that are going to be harder and harder is to produce fine wine in the face of climate change and of low access to staff and to skill staff to work in the vineyard. And the increased cost that it's going to be to produce fine wine with everything that it takes. So that's going to be one of the separator. And the second one is going to be about accessing distribution because the competition is so fierce because we, as you mentioned, there's so many people that want to enter that upper middle class to very high class of wine that, you know, distributors got all their cards in hands and that's going to be a lot of hard work for producers to get themselves seen and noticed and followed. On top of all the hard work that they will have to produce their fine wine. Sarah, did you want to comment on any of that? And what you think the many shoes are going to be, or the main opportunities are going to be for our industry this year. What you're saying, Corley, about this kind of growing broadening of the fine wine world. I think champagne's an important part of that. For Liz, you mentioned, you know, reports of, you know, collectors slowing down their drinking, liquidating sellers. So I think we'll probably see an injection of a lot of older ventures into the market. I think rather than, you know, maybe depressing prices, I think that's, you know, liquidity is always good for markets, right? And I think that's got the potential to drive a lot of interest in a lot of classic fine wine regions. As particularly younger drinkers will get greater opportunities to taste these wines with some age. You know, that's potentially quite an exciting thing. Yeah, that's an interesting thing. Yeah. Exactly. I think, you know, maybe connected to that as well. We'll see some people who, you know, particularly in the younger drinking segment who have traditionally been natural wine drinkers. I think there's potential for them to migrate into fine wine, particularly with pigeons, who share the values of the natural wine producers that they've been drinking. There's a lot of fine wine producers who are, you know, making wine sustainably and, you know, whatever authentic means. And there's potential for them to kind of move to sort of climb into that space as well, which I think is a good thing. And then finally, I mean, a little bit out there, but I think we're going to talk more about Argentina this year. I mean, they've just elected what a controversial new president is promised to make some pretty significant economic changes. And Argentina is a big export country for wine in general. And so any big changes in Argentina likely to have some impact on the border market, I would have thought. Indeed. And I'm surprised we didn't talk about that more actually. Those are my crystal ball. Argentina, and as a bit of an anecdote, I did quite a lot of, you know, tasting when they're. We're going to talk a lot about the Plaster Border and the Distribution System this year in Orenion. We've got loads of surprise coming up along the way. But I've interacted a lot with the Plaster Border and did a lot of tastings of all the new wines that they bring on into the Plaster. And some of them are from Argentina. And that's the questions that I've asked, because I found myself in tasting surrounded by buyers in London and in other places. And I asked them, you know, those. What did you think about those wines? And I like those wines are fantastic. And I would like to sell more of them, but it's very, very difficult. So again, to Felicity's point is that discrepancy between, you know, the quality of the wine and sometimes people being very, very safe and their choices and how hard it is to actually make it into that premium upper middle class segment, regardless of the quality of your wine and how distribution is important. Before we go, you know, we'll continue into trends. I just wanted to step back a bit and ask, you know, we've talked a lot at the end of the year about alcohol and, you know, it's a global place of alcohol on the table and wine and health and all of those conversation. But I still think should be one of the major conversations that we need to continue to have in 2024. My feeling and because of course, I've talked a lot about that topic, both on the record and of the record. But I can see two sides in the wine industry. The ones that I like, yep, we really need to be careful with wine and health and we need to be responsible. And of course, wine is alcohol and we need to do whatever we can to promote moderation. The other side, which is not to get moderation, but in some way, can't understand why they need to act because they are still like, I don't understand that conversation about wine and health. Wine has always been part of the diet and it's always been known that wine is good in moderation. And so I think both camps are of course promoting moderation in the fine wine segment. You never hear anyone having a different speech. But I'm not sure we aligned at all in how we need to act and how we need to organise the answer and that worries me quite a lot. Yeah, I completely agree with you. So first of all, I think there is some mobilisation around this now, but it like you said, it really bothers me that some members of the wine trade cannot understand the fact that there is an issue with alcohol and wine in some segments is not as benign as, you know, we would like to believe. I've seen some shocking marketing of wine take place over the last 10 years or so and I really noticed that every January come dry January with how hostile the wine trade is to people who are moderating their intake. Now I've done dry January and I found it really good. Most of the great spiritual dishes have a period of fasting. And it's part of reflecting on consumption and I don't see that as a bad thing. But I think the more that I hear the wine trade get hostile to something that, you know, does let people reset their relationship with alcohol, the more I worry that they haven't understood what we're really facing here. And it's that genuine, unconprehension of like, why do we have to think about this? Why, they can't thousand of words where wine's not here, which I can understand it's hard to father, but I wouldn't want to live in a world without wine for different reasons that not just about consumption, but about everything that wine represents and the culture and the agriculture and all of that. But is that genuine feeling about people thinking that it's always going to be like this, which worries me a bit or maybe they are right. And, you know, optimism will win and you know, wine will still be here and so have the same status in 50 years or 60 years, but I'm not actually sure. I'm going to say that from a business and marketing standpoint that I think we're going about getting brands to understand the impact incorrectly, which is we need to be paying attention to the economic impact of ignoring it. And some of that will come from banks who don't want to lend governments who don't want to give money grants that you won't be available for. If we, you know, it's funny because we talk about polarization. There are actually three ways that this can go not to go too far down the wine and health route, but you can emphatically care about it. You can emphatically fight against it or guess what? You can just do nothing. And we have a lot of brands and I will say for the most part, or champagne brands are a great example of it. We have a lot of brands that they're just not doing anything. There's just there's no reason for them to be a part of that conversation because they're not interested in it and their audience isn't interested in it. So I can't say that this is how I see the trend going, but if we want to make a trend happen, we need to communicate around wine and health and moderation and money. it has to be about the financial impact of doing or not doing something. I was thinking about this as a bit of a context. It was early 2022 when the Becker report was discussed at the European Commission that would actually. This is the Beijing Cancer Report, I should say. Yeah, that's the report. That says that alcohol is dangerous from the first single drop, and therefore it's a risk product, and that should be actually written in ink that alcohol and therefore wine is dangerous from the first drop. My first reaction was like, "Well, if that gets voted, if that's now, those status quo at the European Parliament, how will they be able to fund vitical to anymore?" That's my first reaction to money is that people will need to take into account that alcohol and wine is dangerous from the first drop and how it's going to arm the cells of wine, but also the production because if a body like the European Union decide that it's risky from the start, how can they spend millions of euros in the production of it and those kind of money repercussion things? I think about it a lot, as you know, because you've probably heard all the podcasts that we've done about it, but I'm not exactly sure what's the way forward, and that's why it worries me so much. Moving on to Sarah Shared, a bit of trends, and what we are going to see more of in 2024, I'm going to maybe rephrase that question slightly and not just ask you what we are going to see more of, but what you wish we're going to see more of. So maybe, you know, not maybe what's going to happen, but what you would like to see happening in the next 12 months. Is it felicity? Do you want to start? What would I like to see happening? I would like to see more professionalisation. I think this is something that we talk a lot about at a rainy behind the scenes, but you know, and we have a rethinking education, white paper coming out on this topic, but I would like to see less emphasis on how wine tastes and the product and more emphasis on professionalisation and upskilling of people in the industry. Polly? I am super excited by some things that I've been seeing on social media. Thanks to our very difficult, but very lovely Gen Z, which is, I want to see transparency around money and production. So I've come across a fabulous Australian line maker who he is on TikTok and Instagram talking about all of the financial as well as production issues around starting his own winery, the cost of getting set up, the challenges when things go wrong. I think to use one of Felicity's favourite words, it's a very opaque industry and people still live in this romanticised world of what it must be like. But if we're taking a generation who's so accustomed to reality TV, unscripted, everything's on the table and they've grown up in a world where people are redoing shadows and you know, building tiny homes and whatever it might be, I want to see them get their hands on wine and actually take something that is so secret and hidden and we're all kind of in love with it and blow it open. What does it take to produce a wine, a fine wine and a claimed wine, whatever it might be? So that's my wish list and I'm seeing little inklings. It's a great wish. I love that. Yeah, and includes money in it. Sarah, would you like to see more of in 2024? I'd like to see more wine tourism. I think, you know, if you look at the kind of both the opportunities and challenges that are facing the fine wine world, opportunities, you know, people, we know that people are looking for great experiences, authenticity, connections to a product and wine tours and beautiful places and travel and things where you can take a lovely picture and put it on Instagram. And I think wine tours and can deliver all of those things by, you know, taking people to these regions, wine regions are always beautiful. As we know, we're very lucky to work in an industry where the production side, well, for the most part, is it's very aesthetic. And I think it also solves this other problem. You know, we were talking about the alcohol issue and I think wine tourism and connecting people to the place shows that wine is a cultural and agricultural product, not just some views that you pick off the shelf. So I'd like to see more wine tourism. Can I jump in with an anecdote? I completely agree with you, Sarah. But when I was in Australia late last year, I was talking to some people who, I think I'm from Macaronville and they offer a very, very expensive tour, including chatting to the wine maker and stuff like that. And people were starting up, I know what they said, it was $650,000, it took a warning of the wine or its time. And more and more people are turning up who don't drink. They want to know about wine because really, there's social cash around it, but they don't touch the product. Well, and so they were talking about this dilemma of should they run tours for people like that because all right, they make $1,000, but then they know that that person will never turn into a customer. It's a form of wine education so people can be involved in the conversation. And I thought, what a dilemma. That's really interesting. Yeah. I mean, for the greats of good, yeah. Isn't that something that we would also love to see change? Is this notion that our only customer is the customer who's buying for themselves to drink right now? Like, there's this real lack of awareness of the relevant other that there are people all over the world who buy wine that is not necessarily for their consumption or they might not drink that particular wine that they buy. But I was at Texam this year, I spoke at Texam last August to really recommend that conference if you're around Dallas in August. And so the first time I actually also met journalist and a content writer in editor and she did all kind of very great things in wine who didn't drink. And she didn't drink, but she was so interested in the industry. And I think that's something that can actually help. I mean, if you look at the prism of what's interesting in your experience and your knowledge, that's why I find fascinating in wine is there's a ways of way to connect with people outside of the product. Of course, drinking the wine is great, but there's so many great things that you can do around. Building on what you've said, Sarra on the wine tourism, one of the things that I would like to see happen, it's really wishful thinking about too. One is I would like the top wines that elite to realize that they can't exist without the smaller ones. That's something that I would really want to see more. And notably in wine tourism, I'm thinking in Bordeaux in particular and I see Polysmile because she knows that something that I feel really strongly about, that I think there's a very, very big risk in Bordeaux of the big shadows, ignoring the fact that they are in the same region that small ones and totally disconnecting them from the smallest dates. When you build a wine tourism off of it's not just skewed, everything that's connected around you that makes your region attractive. And that's something that I would like to see more of. I'd like to see cooperatives more integrated in that premium segment as well because if you look at it the positive way, cooperative, you have such a positive impact and we've seen examples all through Europe's of cooperatives that have made impact in terms of the way they're farming in terms of the wine that produce and when they have an impact, they have an impact on 900 growers. So they are really powerful actors and stakeholders in the wine world and I would love to see them more integrated. I always have that example of, you know, Miguel Torres is one of my inspirational modules that was growing up and one of the things that the Torres do is that they have this project that it's called the Siette Magnificos. So it's small appellation like mumsons that are around Barcelona and around Penedides but they do not have the same kind of recognition that the Torres wines have. And so they share a lot with them in terms of production and advice but also in terms of distribution because they are very much aware that in the long run the attractability of Torres and Penedides is also linked to the rest of the region and I love those kind of projects I would like to see that more of. And that's kind of linked to my second very wishful thinking kind of all this pink world but I've reflected a lot of one of the podcasts that we did with Kiko's feel on what it means to be great and also on what Tamara again l'a said in our podcast on education and she said that excellence is both the most beautiful thing and the most terrible thing because excellence can't happen without the excess of resources because otherwise if you've got the same resources that everyone you're just normal you can't be excellent without an excess of resource. And fine wine is this and I can see the battle going on on a like philosophical level that is it right for us to be that expensive? Is that right for us to be inaccessible? And it's not a matter of right or wrong it's just what it is like excellence takes an excess of resources and it's not fair excellence is not fair and it can't be fair just like it can't be inclusive and accessible to everyone otherwise it's not just excellence but once we've agreed on that this is not the you know the stopping point what do we need to do what's the responsibility there what do we need to do to stay relevant to stay excellent to continue to inspire people and be true classic in that sense that we are we continue to be relevant through generation and we inspire the rest of the trade and I think there are a lot of things that we can reflect on when it comes to the elite and the top premium wines on what needs to be done to continue to inspire but that's what I would like to see more in 2024. Succession! One golden gloves! Yay we lost the exception! I want to go back to Flusty at the very beginning said that conspicuous spending is going to What did you say you said that that luxury will be more? discreet and I wrote conspicuous spending would wane and I think that we are thanks to things like succession which put that notion of quiet luxury or coded luxury or whatever we call it. We are going to enter a space where the polarization is no longer going to include this topmost band. It's not going to be polarized because you only know if you know it is so coded and it is so quiet and that's where the discussions that we're having now you know the inspiration and the inclusivity and the you know sort of the democratization doesn't even exist. None of that's even a part of that conversation anymore. So it's almost like we now have you know we have literal banding and polarization just within luxury. We've got your indiscreet luxury, we've got your luxury that this blingy and then we're going to have the category of luxury that either by excellence or excellent marketing and they're both a form of excellence sits so far above everything else. But that that was part of one of my wishful thinking is that we actually see more and more like top brands disappearing from the shelf. So it's not just a matter of how much money you have but you have to know where to find them because they are no longer visible and I can't decide an only time well tell if that's the winning strategy or that's a real risk because again if you look at what it is to be a classic you have that role of inspiring and leading and being relevant and if you exist only in a small bubble maybe that's how the world is going and maybe that's the successful at least midterm strategy but what kind of impact in that having the long run I'm not sure. So I want to leave everyone with a positive positive thoughts and exciting stuff and opportunities so I'm going to ask you all one thing that you are you know looking forward to in this new year one thing that really excite you about 2024 and that can be anything. Sarah do you want to start what are you really excited about apart from working working with me more of course but you know. Yeah sure so of course which is always my favourite thing. So I live in Miami in South Florida and I am really excited to see this market mature and to see a lot of you know I think there's quite a lot of young talent that's starting to come out of Miami increasingly we're seeing a lot of new restaurant openings, so I'm just really excited to see the market mature to see some talent you know come out become well known you know across the industry and to have our market sort of be seen to be taken a bit more seriously I started a wine trade group this year called Wine Talks Miami and you know it's kind of panel discussions and these sorts of things and I was you know people said well will anyone actually show up to something like that in in Miami we all sort of party a lot but will we do serious things and the the first one I had 60 spaces and we filled up the registrations in three days you know so we're going to be taken more seriously we're going to produce some awesome talent and we're going to grow as a market that's what I'm excited about. And put central you know some central in the US not just the east market and the west market but loads of states in the middle as well. Yeah it's actually it's actually talents right across the country I think that's good and healthy. Polly what are you excited about? Very similarly I am loving seeing young people who are working wine are knowledgeable about wine you know the stories that they're telling about how they came to wine the number of young female songs that I meet across the world these days is so fabulous for me because I feel like that I have been just talking and nobody's been listening for years saying that young people love wine stop deriding the younger millennials and the Gen Z and now maybe it's just my ego feeling happy that I'm being proven right but they just the way they talk about it they're so knowledgeable and it's it's from the very beginning that they've got better communication skills better empathy skills better design skills more creativity these things that we fogies like me work hard to embrace are just native to them and I just can't wait to see what they bring to our industry. For me it's the level of quality that we're seeing you know the the very top wines are going to disappear from the market you know most people won't try those wines in their lifetime but you know if we'd had this conversation 10 years ago 15 years ago that would have been very sad but it's less sad now because the the level of quality that's available on the market is unbelievable it's absolutely sensational and it's only going to get better what about you Polly? I'm a very selfish way I'm really excited about everything that we're working on at Irini I mean we've got great conversation coming up on profitability I mean that first quarter of the year is going to be focused on that we've started the conversation in December about can you scale up fine wine and we continue in January and we'll continue in February and we're looking into profitability in different markets I think those are overdue conversation we need to talk about money more and then we're going to focus on distribution quite a lot which I'm also really excited about because we're going to talk about more about education and then distribution and I think that all links together because one of the one of the main takeaways and we writing the white paper at the minute but already one of my main takeaways is that we don't learn about distribution enough and what it takes to actually distribute fine wine we learn a lot about what it takes to make it at least when you in the trade you kind of understand that but what does it take to distribute it and to make it again a financial success I think that's going to be really really fascinating conversations so I'm really excited about that and everything that you've said the quality the new profiles that are coming up the new generations I mean if you look at the last three years one of the things that the wine industry has proven is that it can adapt you know regardless of what people sometimes think that we are traditionalists that never want to change the status quo everything that I see around me doesn't you know prove them wrong like we've adapt so so much there's so much changing around that I'm really excited about this as well thank you very much poly-folicity and sorrow for being with me today as always is such a pleasure working with you and I will see you very soon working on all of those topics and to all of you in the audience again a very happy new year 2024 see you soon in person or online in one of the next to really conversation bye everyone bye thank you bye bye thank you for joining us for the Aurene Global podcast if you liked what you heard today please give us a positive review and share this episode widely stay connected with us and join our conversations via Facebook Twitter or Instagram and visit our website at Aurene.global to find out how you can take action to ensure the future of fine wine