How Fiat Thinking Warped the Wine Industry

In Europe, wine culture was built slowly over generations.

Time, not money, was the main ingredient.

You could not fake it. You could not rush it.

In the U.S., it was different.

By the time American wine started gaining recognition, the corporate mindset was already seeping in.

Short-term profit was not a side effect. It was the strategy.

The top tier of American wine still exists.

But everywhere below it, corners were cut.

Volume has mattered more than vineyard.

Brand has mattered more than bottle.

Massive corporations scaled up, standardized the product, and flooded the shelves, crowding out everyone else.

Not because they were evil.

Because the system rewarded short-term thinking over long-term value.

Now, the cracks are showing.

People are starting to ask why wine makes them feel so bad.

Some are giving up on it entirely.

Others are looking deeper and finding that lower-intervention, local wines are what they had been missing all along.

Wine, at its core, is a low time preference vehicle.

It seems to not want to be rushed, manipulated, or manufactured.

It seems to er towards expressing the land, the season, and the patience of the people behind it.

The roots of wine are still strong.

In Europe, they were never fully severed.

And in the U.S., we are finally starting to let them grow.

But we are a long way from home.