(Note: This is the final post for this blog, which is part of my website SignatureWines.us. Website and blog were created three years ago to help sell my book “The Signature Wines of Superior California: 50 Wines that Define the Sierra Foothills, the Delta, Yolo and Lodi.” Mission accomplished. The book will continue to be available at several outlets in and about Sacramento, all of which are listed at SignatureWines.us. The book also can be ordered via Amazon.com. Rather than continue to post here, however, I want to move on to other projects. Incidentally, the photo above has little to do with the text below. I had set it aside to use with a recent post about wine competitions, then forgot. Thank you for your continued interest in my reports on wine.)

Nary a day passes without wine taking another hit. Sales are down. Wineries are closing. Vines are being pulled out.

Wine has been through these sorts of dips before, but this one is different – wider, deeper, longer. No one can predict confidently how it will shake out.

Since the end of Prohibition in the U.S., periodic downturns in the wine trade have been due to recessions, pest infestations, and an imbalance in supply and demand, the latter of which again is in play. The corrections under way include leaving grapes unpicked, wines unbottled, vines discarded.

But demand languishes, complicating a return to equilibrium. Industry insiders point to demographic shifts extensive and perplexing. Younger people especially – “Zillenials,” those 25 to 45 – have turned their backs on wine. Meanwhile, the segment still marginally interested in wine, older folks, are, as one industry observer gently puts it, “sunsetting.”

Many reasons are advanced for wine’s sorry state, especially among younger people, with health consciousness at the top of the list. Look around. The opening of Pilates studios looks to be outnumbering the opening of wine bars by a ratio of 10:1. Younger people are into fitness more than their elders, and they do not see wine adding anything much positive to their regimen.

For enlightenment, transcendence, and relaxation, wine faces intensifying competition from other options. Craft beers, kooky cocktails, and cans of zany ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages (“Strawberry White Russian,” “Tequila Espresso Martini,” etc.) remain popular. More cannabis dispensaries than Pilates studios may be opening. On the horizon: Growing acceptance and availability of magic mushrooms and psychedelics.

Other reasons for the wine trade’s sluggishness include the heady price of so many wines, especially in restaurants; the vast flat sea of so much mediocre wine; and the ripple effect of appetite-suppressing drugs.

As members of the wine industry gather to try to figure out how to regain their footing, no consensus on what to do has emerged, though vintners remain upbeat, noting that wine has been enjoyed for about 8,000 years despite all sorts of challenges. A couple of strategies are gaining momentum.

One is the frequent suggestion that the trade take greater advantage of social media. Short and snappy videos on Instagram, TikTok and the like will get customers in the door, proclaim marketing wizards. This advice has been sounded for years. It has given rise to all sorts of aspiring online wine influencers. Yet, the needle tracking wine sales has not budged up, and actually has dipped. Why isn’t anyone thinking that social-media shorts, however bright and jaunty, may have a reverse effect on potential wine enthusiasts, turning them off by their blitheness and banality.

The other widespread suggestion, which looks to be gathering drive, argues that wine’s historic role as the beverage of choice at get-togethers from ancient Greek symposiums to today’s book clubs ought to be the focus of efforts to revive public interest in wine. Thus, we get “Come Over October,” last fall’s campaign to bring together family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors to share wine and conversation. And coming up is “Share & Pair Sundays,” a similar push this spring with an emphasis on people getting together to share wine and food. These are fun suggestions, long indulged by sunsetting wine enthusiasts. Whether they can draw younger folk from their devices remains to be seen. Zillenials seem as likely to gather to compare notes on kombucha, coffee and tea as wine.

Despite the dreary state of the wine business, let’s have some fun by considering other options for making Albarino, or Angelica, or Aglianico, or even Alicante Bouschet great again:

A frequently repeated refrain among panelists and speakers during the recent Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento, the nation’s largest annual conclave of commercial grape growers and winemakers, was that the trade needs to provide the curious with “experiences.” The old-fashioned experience of visiting winery tasting rooms or joining a large public tasting in an echoing and drafty warehouse is passé.

If vintners want to attract more younger people to their tasting rooms, they might want to consider Ideum’s interactive digital tasting table. It meets the “real-life,” “hands-on” and “involved” standards that member of the wine trade are talking about to revive their relevance in today’s increasingly competitive market. The digital tables give wine enthusiasts a chance to evaluate wines all on their own. It appeared to be a hit among younger attendees especially at the recent Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento. Here, Scott and Jana Harvey of Scott Harvey Wines in Amador County’s Shenandoah Valley give it a spin during Unified.

Specific suggestions on how to provide more captivating experiences were elusory, though terms like “real-life,” “hands-on” and “involved” were bandied about. What could be more real-life, hands-on and involved than for a winery to invite the wine curious to join the fall harvest?

It would be a win-win situation. Wineries could recruit and train a new breed of farm laborers, the customary source of which is shrinking. Meanwhile, the health-conscious and wine-curious would have a wholesome, sunny, and fun intensive to enlighten them about wine’s most historic, influential, and distinctive role, the connection between place and product.

This is not a novel approach to wine appreciation. Many years ago, I joined members of the wine club at Ridge Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains during their harvest of grapes at Monte Bello Vineyard. I doubt that the folks at Ridge would welcome greenhands into that increasingly hallowed plot today, but plenty of other vineyards about California were stuck with hanging fruit as this past year’s pick wound down. So, why not create a wine club that in addition to the usual perks – discounted prices, complimentary tastings, exclusive releases – gives members the opportunity to chip in and help with the harvest? OSHA concerns? Probably going away.

Speakers also urged vintners to meet potential wine consumers, especially younger potential fans, where they are – at music festival, fitness center, fashion show, comedy club and so forth. That is already happening, but why not kick up the game by turning the winery tasting room into more of an event center? The most entertaining and successful wine event I attended last year – successful in terms of variety, fun and brisk wine sales – was a release party by Perch Wine Co. of Sacramento. It was at the restaurant Canon, and it had something for everyone – a DJ, a tattoo artist, a comedian, food, and wine. It was casually convivial, at once spirited yet intimate, with a crowd that while skewing young was demographically diverse. And while all that was going on, Perch winemaker Adam Saake circulated through the crowd, enthusiastically answering questions, and cultivating new customers.

At Unified, a couple of speakers seemed to suggest that if vintners hope to expand their audience – or at least stop the flow of wine enthusiasts heading elsewhere for a drink – they should learn how to talk of wine without talking of wine. The “need to educate” consumers about wine – ignorance long seen by the trade as the principal obstacle to wine appreciation – is out of date. Today’s wine student already knows all he or she wants to know of trellising techniques, fermentation yeast, and oak-barrel regimen. If they still are curious about any of that, they quickly can find answers on their phone, or by asking sommelier or tasting-room attendant.

During one panel presentation at Unified, the moderator, longtime New York Times wine writer Eric Asimov, came as close as anyone to explaining how vintners might better connect with today’s potential if easily distracted wine pilgrim – talk more of the people and the place behind the wine. In other words, tell the story of why a grape grower tends these varieties of grapes in this place, and what vision a winemaker sees in styling a wine in a particular way. What are they doing to set themselves apart? What is the heart of their story?

Similarly, “the godfather of wine marketing,” Paul Wagner, who for 30 years has been teaching of wine at Napa Valley College, urged vintners in a recent video interview to cultivate a “human connection” between their brand and their anticipated clientele. Consumers want to know the people behind the brands, not the process – why they make the wine, not how – he suggested.

I have a few other suggestions to help snap wine out of its current doldrums:

Keep working on getting exposure of wine in entertainment. Movies and television series over the past couple of decades have insinuated more wine into their storylines, reflecting the real-life embrace of wine. Now is the time to dial up product placement, and to conceive of it in new ways. Consider books. Without any prompting from the wine trade, contemporary American novelists look to be giving wine more attention, generally to flesh out character and build atmosphere rather than advance plot. For example, I rather like how Rachel Kushner sprinkles breezy and apt references to wine in her novels, such as this from her latest, “Creation Lake:” “I sipped rosé from the Luberon at a clammily air-conditioned Monop’ off the A55, a chaotic place where children screeched and a haggard woman dragged a dirty mop over the floor. The rosé was delicate and fruity, crisp as ironed linen.” Novelists usually are not on the receiving end of sample shipments from wineries, but that could change.

Hey, Wine Institute, team up with Laundry Sauce. Laundry Sauce makes pods of detergent that leave your freshly washed clothes smelling of Australian sandalwood, French saffron, Oregon mint and the like. Don’t wear anything washed with Laundry Sauce if you are going wine tasting. Beyond that, imagine the positive impact if the Wine Institute could be persuaded to team up with Laundry Sauce to produce pods that leave clothes redolent of Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel and so on. Such an aromatic shirt could prompt a stranger to ask what that delightful scent is, opening the door to the world of wine.

Nasal strips. Why is no winery branding and handing out at the tasting-room door the sorts of nasal strips that athletes frequently slap on their noses to help prop open passages? In a tasting room or a community wine tasting, such strips could help consumers struggling to grasp what a wine has to say. Do they really work? Doesn’t matter, the strips could become fashion accessories.

The wine challenge. Familiar with the 10-minute art challenge of The New York Times? Works like this: Once a month or so, The Times posts a work of art and invites readers to ponder it for 10 uninterrupted minutes. The exercise is intended to foster a more concentrated, revealing and rewarding understanding of a piece. The thinking is that 10 undisturbed minutes will give an art observer time to register aspects of a work that commonly are overlooked during the pace of a typical stroll through a gallery.

Whether at home or in tasting room, the same exercise could be applied to wine. Picture a small group, each member of which has in front of him and her a glass of the same wine. For 10 minutes, they look at it, smell it, taste it, ask themselves such questions as: What does it taste like? What mood does it enhance? Something joyful? Something grim? How does the mood change as you take another sniff and sip? Where do your thoughts and palate go? What does it put you in mind of? What food, place or person does it evoke? What do you think the wine is about? All this privately, in silence. Then discuss. I am going to do that right now.

Follow-up: First, 10 minutes go by faster when wine is at hand than when a painting is before you, but with wine you are more active, lifting, turning, tilting the glass and taking sniffs and sips. The wine I chose was the Terra d’Oro 2021 Amador County Deaver Vineyard Zinfandel. During the 10 minutes, the wine delivered all the rewards long recognized in Amador County Zinfandel, especially one from vines some 130 years old, as the Deaver – brilliant, flashing, deep color, suggestions of fresh and juicy raspberries and boysenberries, solid backbone, wood shavings, grippy tannins and alert acidity. The wine felt as if the roots of the vines that yielded the grapes plunged clear down to granite bedrock, it was that solid.

The letdown was that the wine settled on one amiable plateau and didn’t much budge. It did not reveal as much complexity as I was anticipating, given its pedigree. And the finish tapered off sullenly, no dramatic and romantic soliloquy here. For accompanying dish, the juicy fruit and rigidity of the wine evoked a hearty ragu, not so much of duck as marmot or badger. With aging for another three to five years, on the other hand, duck could work just dandy.

Thank you for hanging in here, now and in the past.

To find a copy of my book “The Signature Wines of Superior California: 50 Wines that Define the Sierra Foothills, the Delta, Yolo and Lodi,” please visit my website SignatureWines.us. The book also is available through Amazon.com.