Sober Sommeliers and Menu Mania
What happens when sommeilers become sober? The menu trends across America, Do you have a Secret Food? How Dry January became a branding event for Big Alcohol and a Margarita recipe.
Hi all,
Hope the year has so far been everything you wanted!
This week:
How Dry January became a branding event for Big Alcohol
What Happens When a Sommelier Stops Drinking?
Menu Mania
Secret Food
The Margarita three ways
How Dry January became a branding event for Big Alcohol:
For the past two months we’ve been speaking about Dry January and the ‘sober curious’. So when the article ‘How Dry January became a branding event for Big Alcohol’ popped into my inbox I was immediately intrigued.
“Consumer brands often strive to be part of a larger cultural conversation. But what if that cultural conversation is basically about not using your product?”
“Heineken 0.0, that is. Introduced in 2017, it’s now the top-selling nonalcoholic beer in America; its $86 million in sales reportedly account for 7% of all Heineken brand sales… Alcohol sales have flattened since a pandemic-era spike, while nonalcoholic beer has seen increases of around 30% for several years straight.”
In saying this, let’s take a look at some of the ad campaigns that have come out this Jan. “Blue Moon introduced a nonalcoholic Belgian white ale with a promotion that started January 12—the day when the most significant chunk of Dry January participants fall off the wagon. Miller Lite, in a curious twist, is offering alcohol-free “beer mints” that supposedly mimic the brew’s flavor. And White Claw, a brand whose entire raison d’etre is adding alcohol to seltzer, has rolled out a zero-alcohol version.”
Building up non-alcoholic drinks is beginning to transcend Dry January as a business strategy for Big Alcohol. It’s become the norm.
Dry Atlas had an interesting take on some of the motivations behind ‘Big Alc going Non-Alc’.
“The significant drop in alcohol consumption among younger generations is likely worrying these companies, with countries worldwide seeing a substantial percentage of Gen Z avoiding alcohol entirely.
As large public companies, these alcohol giants might be hedging against investor concerns about the stagnant alcohol market, not to mention the negative impacts of alcohol on society.
Launching non-alc brands clearly tied to the parent brand represents a clever advertising loophole. This strategy circumvents the tightening restrictions on alcohol advertising, particularly in sports in Europe, where there’s a push to protect underage viewers from alcohol brands.”
I thought the last reason was particularly interesting (and concerning). I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for how the drinks market integrates low, no, and full-proof options.
What Happens When a Sommelier Stops Drinking?
I was equally intrigued by this headline and article in the Wine Enthusiast.
What does it mean to be a sober wine sommelier? Laura Vidal sober wine sommelier discusses this in a podcast interview with writer Rachel Tepper Paley and what sober life looks like for her in her career. Interestingly, she talks about how being sober has improved her smell and taste. She also discusses how being sober interacts with her role as a sommelier and her French culture.
You can listen to the episode here.
They also reference an article titled ‘Can a Sommelier Be Sober?’ which shares 3 professionals’ experiences of abstaining from alcohol while working in a booze-soaked industry.
Laura Vidal (sober for 4 years) has never called her relationship with alcohol “problematic” but instead decided to embrace sobriety after a brief pause from alcohol. She still tastes the wines she serves to her clients and customers, although she spits.
Alternatively sommelier Sam Anderson (semi-sober for 8 years) comes from a different lens and has a strong history of personal and family addiction. After becoming a father he reflected on his relationship to alcohol and decided to shift his business to wine importing and distribution.
Timothy Hanni (30 years sober) has made a successful career out of wine working as a retail wine buyer, manager, and broker. In his 40-year career, he has spent 30 of them sober after confronting his problematic relationship with alcohol. He now teaches wine business courses at universities, consults around the world, and conducts his own wine research, which has been incorporated into the Wine & Spirits Education Trust curriculum.
Interestingly they all discussed the biggest effect being sober had on their work was the way it triggered others to reconsider their own relationship with alcohol and the assumptions people made about their work.
However, with the undeniable industry and societal calls for more low/zero-proof alcohol drinks, it’s clear there’s a growing place for wine professionals with a range of relationships with alcohol. As Laura Vidal reminds us “You’re still a sommelier, and you still have a lot to offer.”
Menu mania:
The NYT published an interactive article capturing the menu trends across the country.
If you’re a long-time Drink Seco reader (you don’t go unnoticed) you might remember when I wrote about the history of menus in New York and the archive of over 40,000 menus dating back to 1843 in the New York Public Library. You can go back and read about it here.
This is kind of an extension of that. In 2023 the NYT Food team traveled the country to scout candidates for their annual list of favorite restaurants, they also set out to understand, more broadly, what defines eating out today.
Let’s look at the trends they’ve mapped out.
For food:
Trendy offerings like tinned fish and $12 bowls of olives show no signs of disappearing, but some dishes and ingredients feel especially of the moment.
The Caesar salad can be found pretty anywhere. From Mexican restaurants to Thai, Cuban, and your average Steakhouse, you can expect a Caesar salad variation.
Caviar is also trending (we can probably link this to the broader trends towards indulgence and opulence as I spoke about at the end of last year).
Yuzu is still a popular ingredient across dishes and cocktails.
Apparently, it’s “boom time for fried chicken” in practically every cuisine. A cost-friendly comfort food, fried chicken is staying strong as a staple in American restaurants.
I was interested to see that “Nostalgic desserts” were on the rise, bonus points if it has "mum’s” in the title.
And finally, for food trends, panna cotta is being seen across American restaurants. A simple, inexpensive, delicious dessert.
The aesthetic:
In terms of menu aesthetics, we’re looking at bolder and brighter. “While white and off-white have long felt like the default menu colors, some restaurants are setting themselves apart by adding pops of neon and bright patterns. Dazzling pinks made a noticeable splash in the year of Barbie supremacy.”
I for one, am thrilled by this and the return of interesting, creative menus. After suffering through the QR code menu era it seems we’ve come out the other side! And boy are there some worthy menus for the archives.
We can also expect to see cute mascots and graphics pop up on our menus but in bad news, there are a lot of small fonted menus going around…
Informal menus are in. People want to see personal, approachable menus with “more humanness” even if the graphics look like they were created by a design-school freshman. This seems a little at odds with the return of bold and beautiful menus, however, I think it speaks to a broadening creativity with menus on the whole.
Many restaurants are bridging this gap by including subtle personal touches to their menus; stamps, wax seals, handwriting, and embossing.
Given the cost of dining out, people are looking for more than a good meal when they go to a restaurant. They want a whole experience, and this means looking at the details, right down to the menu.
The anatomy:
Interestingly, the NYT found restaurants are trying to find ways to communicate their values. “If the farm-to-table movement inspired menus that listed every local supplier, this era’s emphasis on workers’ rights has spurred owners to credit every employee or note that they provide health insurance.”
“Small, big, bigger” is the new “appetizer, entree, dessert.” Menus are increasingly arranged by plate size rather than strict labels and orders
The other exciting trend in American menus is the rise in alcohol-free drinks! Further, from the menus on the NYT website, we can see that graphically these options are not positioned as an afterthought or ‘kids option’ but an integral part of the drink menu.
Ingredients, thankfully “Somewhere between the elaborate dish descriptions of the 1990s and the single-ingredient titles of the 2000s (“Scallop. Shiso. Lemon.”), many restaurateurs have found a happy medium: just enough information to convey what a dish might actually look or taste like, with a little mystery to keep the diner in suspense.”
Permanent menus. The trend of menu boards (while more sustainable) I’m not totally in love with (in case you can’t tell I love a good handheld menu).
Anyways, there’s your breakdown of the NYT’s investigation into menu trends. If you come across any really cool ones please feel free to send them my way! They capture such unique points in time.
Secret Food:
Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher’s essay ‘Borderland’ opens with "Almost everyone has something secret he likes to eat". You might think she’s talking about guilty pleasures, but you’d be mistaken.
Molly Young introduced me to the idea of Secret Foods in her newsletter yesterday “Fisher's concept of the Secret Food was more about idiosyncrasy; about the eating practices one carried out in private not because they were shameful but because it was inconceivable that anyone else might find similar rapture in them.
Fisher’s own example is: radiator tangerines. Here, I’ll paraphrase her instructions for making them:
1. Peel 3-4 tangerines, separating the segments and removing as much string and pith as possible.
2. Place your pregnant crescents on a sheet of newspaper.
3. Place the newspaper on top of a hot radiator.
4. Forget about the tangerines.
5. Hours later, remember the tangerines. Observe how they have grown hot and plump.
6. Open the window next to the radiator and scatter your hot tangerines across the snow that has accumulated on the sill.
7. Now the fruit is ready to eat. Here's Fisher again: "I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell."“
“The Secret Food is a subcategory of eating alone—a broader pleasure that many have written about, including Fisher. The most succinct defense of eating alone appears in Enid Bagnold’s lost novel The Loved and Envied (1951), in which a lifelong bachelor gets married in old age only to discover that his new wife plans to sit at the dinner table with him. Shocked and appalled at the notion of surrendering his solo meals, the old man requests a divorce.”
A few Secret Foods come to mind, although they’d lose their fun if I shared them with you…
The Margarita three ways:
This week for a recipe I’m offering a not so secret margarita recipe for however you drink.
That’s all for this week folks! Hope you enjoyed reading :)
Carlie xx