Traceability. Climate change. Consolidation. Younger generations drinking less. Artificial intelligence applied to the vineyard. This, more or less, is the agenda of every major wine gathering, from Vinexpo to La Paulée. And rightly so — it takes the measure of the upheavals our industry must answer to.
Every one of these questions is legitimate. But another is asked far too rarely, in our lecture halls and around our round tables: What are we trying to make people feel? Because before it is a market, a grape variety, an appellation regulation or an oenological feat, wine remains — like perfume — a profoundly emotional experience.
Another industry has already asked the question — and answered it in numbers
Perfume and wine share more than a common history of noses and artisanal knowledge handed down across generations. They share a single economic truth: no one buys either to solve a problem. People buy them for what they evoke.
And this truth, perfumery has just demonstrated with almost impertinent clarity. While the global fragrance market grew by 8%, the segment of perfumes priced above 150 euros leapt by 32% across Europe in 2024. How could we explain such a gap? It is the intensity of the experience on offer — and a house’s capacity to give the wearer something irreplaceable.
Wine, and fine wine above all, would do well to draw the lesson rather than watch from a distance. The same mechanism is at work in our own cellars. A great vintage has almost no utilitarian value whatsoever. Its value is born of the memory it leaves behind, the moment it accompanies, the story it tells the instant the cork gives way. Two people may taste the very same bottle and never live the same experience. To an engineer, this looks like a weakness. To anyone who understands luxury, it is our greatest asset.
The more we measure, the less we tell
The paradox is the same in both industries. The more expert an industry becomes at modeling itself — yields, tasting notes, ripening curves, critics’ scores, climate forecasts — the more it is tempted to speak no other language. Technical vocabulary is reassuring; it fits neatly into a spreadsheet, a boardroom presentation. Feeling does not.
But a business can perfectly well banish emotion from its vocabulary. In doing so, it will also banish itself from the consumer’s experience. Volumes will decline, margins will thin, and every possible explanation will be sought — purchasing power, the rise of craft beer, the sober-curious movement, Generation Z — before anyone admits the simpler truth: we have stopped telling anyone why this wine, and not another.
A winemaker’s intention is a business asset too
Grasse perfumery holds one advantage over us. Since 2018, its craft has been inscribed on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — and UNESCO does not reduce that craft to the mastery of raw materials or extraction techniques. It recognizes an art that draws equally on imagination, memory, and creativity.
The climats of Burgundy and the hillsides of Champagne have enjoyed comparable recognition since 2015. And yet we speak of it differently — more as a heritage argument than as proof that a winemaker’s creative intention is, itself, a driver of value.
This distinction becomes crucial in the age of artificial intelligence. Thanks to sensors, climate modeling, and decision-support tools, we will soon harvest with more data than ever, test more hypotheses, anticipate more scenarios. All well and good. But the wider the field of possibility grows, the rarer — and more precious — one particular skill becomes: knowing why one chooses this harvest date, this ageing, this blend, over another that is statistically its equal. That is intention. It is not the enemy of oenological science, nor of commercial performance. It is what gives both a direction — and it is, in the end, what the consumer is paying for, whether they know it or not.
Wine will survive on what it makes us feel, not on what it measures
The world of fine wine will endure. Not in spite of the climatic, economic, and generational upheavals running through it, but because of its capacity to remain an emotional experience that no dataset can fully capture. Perfume has shown the way: the more an industry embraces feeling as the very heart of what it offers, the more it prospers — above all at its highest end. Perhaps it is time our own gatherings made room, at last, for the question too often pushed to the bottom of the agenda, somewhere beneath the slides on regulation and climate: What are we trying to make people feel?
Contact Guillaume Jourdan via LinkedIn
