The wine industry has done a lot of panicking about how young people (20- to 40-year-olds) aren’t drinking their share of vino.
Experts debate the reasons (competition from spirits and RTD cocktails) and what to change to reach them, from wine styles, grapes and alcohol levels to labels, communication via social media and celebrity branding. But all of it misses a key point.
If you want to create a sustainable culture of young wine consumers, please, please do this:
Create space for more young, independent winemakers.
That’s it.
We live in a golden age of wine diversity. Yet a lot of oxygen—not to mention pricey vineyards and real estate—is sucked up by elite, established wineries, which often guard their turf against upstarts.
But to keep things fresh and alive, the wine world absolutely needs disruptors with youthful cockiness and energy.
This was true with the 1970s mavericks of California and Tuscany and with the Barolo Boys of the ’80s. It’s been true in recent decades with the advent of natural wines, grower Champagnes, skin-contact whites and long-overlooked grapes suddenly becoming cool.
New waves of wine excitement are often led by younger (or young-minded) drinkers. New scenes or styles are often fueled by young producers.
If I were an established wine producer, I’d give a corner of my vineyards and cellar to the talented twenty-somethings on my staff and their friends. I’d say, “On your time, do what you want. Experiment. Make mistakes. But make your wine.”
And I’d watch and see what happens.
That leads me to the winemaker I’m writing about this week: Alessandro Salvano, 28, from Italy’s Piedmont region, where he launched his provocative wine brand Drink Wines, Not Labels (DWNL).
The fire in his belly was lit early. Salvano grew up in the tiny Piedmontese burg of Montelupo Albese (pop. 468), which borders Serralunga d’Alba—one of 11 villages in the Barolo appellation.
To Salvano, it made no sense that Nebbiolo from Barolo vineyards in Serralunga sold for much higher prices than Nebbiolo from Montelupo, which has similar well-exposed slopes and blue marl soils.
So, in 2019, he made his first 2,000 bottles of DWNL from his uncle’s Nebbiolo vineyards in Montelupo. Nearly half his harvest went to a wine that aged more than 38 months in a single 700-liter barrel; it was released in 2023 under the name “Outside.”
“I wanted to make a wine like a Barolo that on the label was not Barolo, but in a blind tasting with Barolo could stay in the match,” he says while walking the hillcrest of his vineyard in Montelupo on a rainy January afternoon.
Of course, it’s presumptuous.
But Salvano believes the boundaries of Barolo don’t define great Nebbiolo. What’s more, climate change is changing terroirs. So why can’t a Langhe Nebbiolo compete in the big leagues?
“I’m making an idea in a glass,” says Salvano, who—with shaved head, beard and toothy smile—bristles with impatient energy. “The idea is that today, if you are a good winemaker and grower, you don’t have to worry about appellation.”
Now, I don’t think that is entirely true, though I agree that appellations aren’t perfect and shouldn’t be immutable. Plus, I like his wines.
For lunch in Barolo, he brings a bottle wrapped in aluminum foil. It turns out to be his quaffable, delicate and elegant Langhe Rosso 2020, made from Dolcetto.
That afternoon, we also taste his “Outside” Langhe Nebbiolos in bottle and barrel. Their style is more ethereal than earthy: pale in color, clean and spicy on the nose, and saline and fresh on the palate.
So far, Salvano’s nervy project is working. His wines have been selling without difficulty at relatively high prices for the region—“Outside” retails for more than many Barolos at about 80 euros ($87)—and production has grown to about 2,000 cases. This spring, his wines will make their debut in the U.S. through a small Oregon importer.
“When you make 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 bottles, if you can’t sell it, it’s probably because the wine is not good,” he says matter-of-factly.
All his wines are made following the same method: Burgundy-inspired whole-cluster fermentation on indigenous yeasts, with no filtering and few sulfites added.
“I don’t like to say ‘natural wine’ because that’s a fashion. I want to make good wine,” Salvano says. “I grew up with a very classic taste and palate.”
“People who talk about natural wine do it so they can sell it as funky,” he adds dismissively. “Funky doesn’t interest me.”
Salvano graduated from Alba’s viticulture and enology school at 19 and immediately went to work as a cellar hand, first in Barbaresco, then Barolo. Later, he worked in sales for Barolo’s Borgogno winery. For the past three years, his day job has been overseeing the wine portfolio for Turin-based spirits importer and distributor Compagnia dei Caraibi.
“I want to make my own wine and make my own decisions," says Salvano, explaining his reasons for launching DWNL. He started buying grapes from his uncle and using space in his winery. After starting with two wines from Nebbiolo, in subsequent vintages he added Chardonnay, Dolcetto and Pinot Noir bottlings. Their large, white, minimalist front labels bear “Drink Wines, Not Labels” written in, respectively, French, Spanish and Japanese.
Last year, he had an opportunity to buy 20 acres—more than half planted to vines—from a retiring grower in Montelupo, but he lacked the cash. His employer offered to finance the purchase and provide seed capital in exchange for a majority stake in a partnership they cheekily called Have Fun.
Salvano, who kept the DWNL brand, immediately began converting the vineyards to organic farming. He rented a dormant cellar outside Alba and moved his winemaking there; now it’s dotted with demijohns containing experiments like an orange Chardonnay and a Nebbiolo rosé aged on red lees.
“These are not real wines,” he says, “but some fun ways to understand some things.”
In coming years, he plans to build a cellar in Montelupo and open it to winemaking peers as a shared space. “If you work around friends, you have more opportunity to experiment and to learn,” he says. “I don’t think my way is better than someone else's. Each producer has a different style and ideas.”
Now that sounds a lot like the New Gen start-up culture that I’ve seen in hipper parts of Sonoma wine country. If it takes root in a tradition-bound corner of Italy, it can work most anywhere. Maybe this is what wine’s future looks like.
