Chief Reporter of "Huaxia Wine News" Yang Menghan
Whether it is a mandatory standard or a custom-made standard, there must be a set of mature and effective certification and identification methods to maximize the protection of "consumption sovereignty" and "right to know" ·····
There are wine marketing experts predict that in the future, consumers may give priority to real vintage wine . Real vintage wine depends on the authenticity of the year, not the high or low of the year.
Chasing "truth and beauty" has always been human nature, and the same is true when it comes to choosing alcohol products. In other words, this prediction based on human nature is completely correct and there is no problem.
However, ideals are bound to reality, and this cannot be overcome with just one leap.
Today's consumers are also pursuing "truth and beauty", but the real environment does not provide them with the opportunity to choose easily - there are so many "vintage wines" of various colors, but very few are truly "aligned with the outside".
Under the rhetorics such as "industry practices" and under the recognition of "the year that is advertised equals the value of the commodity", consumers' acceptance of "year wine" is more of a helplessness.
"Consumer sovereignty awareness" has begun to slowly awaken. For example, a lawyer in Chengdu sued "Fifty Years of Moutai" and it is obvious that consumers no longer tolerate the phenomenon that the "year" of the product is not consistent with the actual year; on the other hand, it also shows that even brands like Moutai, which have a respectful industry status and a wide influence cannot avoid the vulgarity and fall into the "industry practice" of "over-promotion".
In fact, in the past, present and future, consumers are pursuing "truth and beauty" and pursuing "real years". The reason why real years cannot be popular now is not because consumers do not pursue it, but because reality is forced. In the future, whether consumers can easily catch up will still be subject to the market environment.
Although it is now a market state where "demand" determines "supply", while the industry's inertia and interest distribution model have not changed, and the consumers' "sovereignty awareness" is not enough to activate this inherent pattern, the supplier is still conservative and insists on pushing the usual "vintage wine" to consumers.
In a state of fierce competition and in a state of accelerated circulation of information, the market can always respond first.
We see that some companies are the first to launch the concept of "real year", which has echoed consumers' demands to a certain extent, but from another perspective, this is also to be able to find more selling points in a homogeneous competition state.
Industry Association is also echoing this demand and the "truth-seeking" trend. The vintage wine standard proposed in 2019 has a balanced compromise between consumer cognition and industry cognition: mark the year as the weighted average wine age of the main base wine used.
But soon some companies broke this standard in a way closer to consumer perception - the vintage wine it launched claims that the year marked with 100% consistent with the actual year and does not use weighting.
There are already differences in the market on the cognition of "vintage wine" and the corresponding standards. This disagreement will inevitably lead to cognitive disorder among consumers and in turn disrupt the healthy development of the wine market.
"Real Year" has just emerged, and there has been a dispute over development routes. It is difficult for relevant parties who have considerations in business interests and publicity and promotion to reach an agreement in the short term. In other words, this "year battle" will continue, and the chaos it causes will continue.
If you look into the source of this chaos, it is essentially the problem of vintage wine standards, and the lack of mandatory national standards, which leads to their own actions between enterprises and between enterprises and industry associations. In this case, mandatory national standards based on the greatest common divisor and the lowest cognition should be issued as soon as possible, while enterprises can "broaden flowers" based on customary standards.
Of course, whether it is a mandatory standard or a custom standard, there must be a set of mature and effective certification and identification methods to maximize the protection of "consumption sovereignty" and "right to know".
