Ep 45: Prof. Simone Loose on How the Golden Age of Wine Came to an End

Brace yourself! Professor Simone Loose has some truth bombs to drop.

She holds the Chair in Business Economics of the Wine and Beverage Sector at Hochschule Geisenheim in Germany, where her institute has spent over 35 collecting financial data from wine estates. What she sees is not encouraging: customer bases shrinking at more than 4% a year, half of participating businesses unable to pay their owners a living wage, and a generation of producers sitting on land that no longer functions as a retirement plan.

She's mostly talking about Germany but, as she makes clear, its plight is reflected elsewhere. In this conversation Simone traces the structural forces bearing down on wine globally — demographic decline, the retreat from aspirational consumption, climate volatility, the end of cheap debt — and explains why some markets are adapting while others are still debating whether the problem is real.

Felicity Carter is an award-winning wine and drinks journalist, editor and analyst. She led Meininger’s Wine Business International to become the world’s most must-read wine trade magazine, and was founding Executive Editor of The Drop/Pix, which the Wall Street Journal named one of the most trusted sources of wine information. A regular keynote speaker, she was named a 2024 Industry Leader by WineBusiness Monthly. Her Drinks Insider podcast won the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Award for Audio.