Santiago Rivas (Madrid, 1979) is a self-proclaimed ‘wine star’ with enough wicks to take an x-ray of the sector without leaving a puppet with a head. He is, in the scrupulous nature of the term, a true expert on a subject, that of wine, who encourages the initiated, but also the ‘civilian’ – which is what he calls the neophytes – to drink and talk with joy at the table of each house. – on duty. The latter, most certainly, is not its target audience, although from reading it you can draw some conclusions about what it “does wrong.”
There does not seem to be any personal ill will in his words towards those who make the effort to live and, at times, to disseminate – certainly with more pain than glory – a culture that he defends away from any snobbish disguise. In his speech there is, if possible, a lot of crudeness. In 2022, he jumped into the pool with ‘Leave Everything or Leave the Wine’ (2022, Muddy Waters Books) to explain the sociological manifestations that have come in recent years after the paradigm shift in wine consumption.
A theme that has been taken up in ‘Gentrified wines‘ (2024, Muddy Waters Books) to delve deeper into the turbulent waters of the market that satisfies that initiated drinker – who is not ‘civilian’ – and with prices that are sometimes exorbitant. This disseminator, who leads the specialized account Colectivo Decantado on social networks, analyzes, for example, the evils that, in his opinion and in a generalized way, are repeated due to the good nature of some consumers.
Not without being aware of how politically incorrect his approach is, Rivas opts for ‘heuristic‘ –the search for a strategy to solve a problem, in this case making a mistake when choosing what to buy and drink– to optimize the resources that an individual allocates to wine. A formula, whose operation is similar to the mechanism of prejudice, but which is considered valid. Their guide can be summarized like this: don’t pay more for wines made from foreign grapes in your area; do not look at regions that do not have a consolidated prestige; and forget about everything that is cheap. «Ampeolographic xenophobia, latitudinal determinism; and minimum price,” he defines in his particular rule of three.
‘Gentrified Wines’ (2024, Muddy Waters Books)
The author of this theory does not hide the ‘injustice’ that this simplification can entail for many wineries who make good wine with foreign varieties, in denominations of origin associated with a lot of volume and low quality or those who want to position their good bottles at the cost of losing money. Put safety before the adventure of being a bottle explorer.
Added to all this are other issues to take into account: awards and “points” do matter – “Especially, if they are of international origin”, removing the relevance of national scores such as those published by Peñín–; the story –“Another issue that should not be underestimated is the narrative, the story behind a winery, vineyard or brand”–; and limited production, that is, ‘very little’ is better than ‘a lot’.
The phenomenon of gentrification applied to wine
Santiago Rivas dedicates an entire chapter to explaining the current scenario of the expensive wineswith diverse patterns in which the one that gives the title to his book is found. Gentrified wines represent, in his opinion, the most recent phenomenon of what is happening in the sector. And he finds, in urban planning and speculation derived from fashions and the success achieved by a certain area of a city, a parallel.
Just like tourist pressure, it raises prices and forces those who have always lived to look for a new home, the management of expectations, fashions and the intervention of intermediaries interested in between the winegrower and the final customer are marking new exorbitant prices for some references.
«Why is there sometimes no one who can pay a once affordable wine and yet, a stellar sip from yesteryear is now not even sold in a ‘brick’?” asks Joan Valencia, prologue writer of this book. Here, Rivas points directly to the secondary market in which a bottle that leaves the winery for 50 euros can reach, due to its scarcity, the 450 euros for an end customer.
The ‘Nazi’ sommelier, his favorite
Another section of this work focuses on the figure of sommeliers, intermediaries after all between the wine and the person who drinks it when it is at the table of a ‘winebar‘ –these spaces also have their own chapter– or a restaurant. Thus, Rivas categorizes them based on the pattern of behavior that these professionals have with their clients.
This is how he defines, for example, the ‘Nazi’ sommelier – “It’s my favorite profile, the one that turns me on the most,” he says – who is the one who is not going to allow a stranger to drink whatever he wants, although if he assumes it he will end up “drinking well.” ». It doesn’t matter how much you want to spend money, says Rivas. “He commands, manages, doses,” he says.
There is also “AKA the exterminator” who he describes as a true “credit card arsonist” and a “budget terrorist.” It is “the one that leaves you stiff.” Or the “Calimero”, among other archetypes, who is the most pitiful of all and “cries his sorrows” at the tables of the initiated because his team does not follow him, because he cannot have the references he would like or because his clientele does not He comes to value his abilities to make magic with the little he has. “You leave with the account intact, but with the desire to commit suicide too,” says the author of ‘Gentrified Wines’.
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