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Chris Sciacca's avatar

Yes, exactly, let's not bicker over wine categories and winemaking semantics and let's celebrate this rare wine win -- we can ignite the debate again once the wine industry is growing strong again, for now take the "W".

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Dave Baxter's avatar

Great take Simon. Mostly in agreement, though I do question whether "an orange wine in a clear liter bottle with a cartoonish label" can really = cultural appropriation of the Natural wine movement (and whether "cultural appropriation" can even be claimed for a no-specific-culture based philosophy.) Cartoon labels are simply popular right now - I had a retailer really enjoy a wine recently but comment on how it was hard to sell, because the label looked too "grocery store" aka not "fun enough". Consumers are just into that style of label right now, and helps them distinguish the difference from a Meiomi label vs. anything else. And in that sense, Gulp Hablo IS a step away from pure grocery store fare.

At some point, Natural wine has to accept that they are not a promotional style or label or the only version of a finer wine. They get to claim what they actually are, but no one has a claim on promotional style if the facts are accurate. And, as you point out, why oh why do we hate gateway wines so much? The liklihood of Gulp Hablo leading more drinkers to actual Naural wine is pretty high.

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