Has Wine Lost Its Place?
In recent years, wine has changed its place in people’s lives. It has not disappeared—it has simply moved. Once, wine was part ofeveryday life.It accompanied meals, work and ordinary routines. It did not demand special attention, it did not need to be explained, and it did not require a special occasion. Today, wine oftensits beside liferather than within it. It appears when there is time, when there is the desire, after everything else has already been done. It has become a rarer, more deliberate and more demanding gesture.
This shift is not neutral. We live in a fast-paced world where everything pushes towards the maximum: maximum productivity, maximum performance, maximum intensity. Wine has followed the same direction over the past decades. More concentration. More structure. More power. Like training in the gym usingonly maximum lifts. At first it feels like progress; eventually it leads to fatigue. The problem is not that these wines are poor. The problem is thatthey become tiring. They enter lives that are already full, already under pressure. They require attention, concentration and preparation—the very things many people today are trying to escape from. Meanwhile, everyday wine consumption has steadily declined. Wine no longer accompanies life;it often compensates for it.And when a product exists only as compensation, it becomes fragile. The wine sector has continued producing as if everyday consumption still existed. Reality, however, has changed. Wine has remained tied to an idea of intensity that no longer matches today’s rhythm.
Today, many people do not want to stop drinking wine. They simply want toenjoy it without becoming tired of it.This is not about simplifying wine or lowering standards. It is aboutchanging the perspective.Lightness is not the absence of depth. It is precision, balance and tension. Just as everyday training is not based on lifting maximum weights, wine that truly belongs in everyday life is not the one that impresses at first sip,but the one that stands the test of continuity, repetition and time.
This is not a nostalgic return to the past. That world cannot be recreated. It is simply a reading of the present. Wine needs to finda place that fits the lives we actually live,not the ones we wish we lived. It should belong at the table rather than only to special occasions. It should offer pleasure without demanding effort in return. Bringing wine back into everyday life does not diminish its value—it restores it. A wine enjoyed regularly, with pleasure and moderation, often has more to say than one opened only on rare occasions, when we feel “ready” for it.
The real question, then, is not whether wine still has a future, but whether it can find its place again in the way we live today.
Giovanni Batacchi
Owner and interpreter of wine, from vineyard to bottle.