At first glance, it may be hard to see a relationship between the Japanese video gaming giant, Nintendo, and any part of the wine industry. Until you learn there is a ‘Wine Factory’ game you can play on your Switch console.
Clearly, Nintendo cannot have talked to any western wine geeks when creating this; none of them would have allowed the use of the word ‘factory’, despite this being a perfectly logical term for a facility that converts grapes into bottled wine.
But, with the best will in the world, I doubt that, – whatever its name – this game is going to compete with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe; Animal Crossing: New Horizons; Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; all of which have sold tens of millions of copies.
Nintendo’s new gift to the wine industry, however, does not lie in any specific game, but in the launch of its new Switch 2 console, of which the company hopes to sell 15m units this year and 100m by 2030. At a hefty average price of $499.
What sets the Switch apart in gaming terms – and makes it relevant to wine, is that, unlike the games that are notoriously played by solitary people in the privacy of their bedrooms, it is largely based around users competing with each other, in the same room at the same time.
In other words, it encourages that buzz word for many in the wine world right now: ‘conviviality’. I have repeatedly tried to counter the implied or explicit asertion that wine is a uniquely convivial beverage. Tea serves this purpose pretty well in many societies, while there is much to be said for cocktails and beer – and water when it comes from a device in an office around which people congregate.
Convivial owes its origin to the Latin words for ‘feast’, ‘with’ and ‘live’, and it may still carry those associations but, nowadays, as the Cambridge dictionary definition shows, it is not restricted to events where people eat and drink; it’s about situations that ‘make people feel happy and comfortable’ and – and this is the important part – in company.
Outside the world of vinous geekery, wine is almost never the reason for people to get together; along with tea, beer, coffee and cocktails, it’s one of the elements that fits into those social encounters. For many – but far from all – wine happens to be well suited to accompany a meal, but it can also be enjoyed wih peanuts and potato chips by a group of people playing Mario Kart, or with friends at the tennis or golf club after a match.
The challenge for wine today is to become more integrated into more people’s lives. Not in the horse-and-carriage way that placed it on every European table at every meal time – those days are gone, even in France – but as a widely varied, tasty and, in moderation, relatively healthy beverage to enjoy when spending quality time with other people.
Which, I suggest, is why wine producers and distributors should be putting more effort into selling more wine to places where people have fun together. Learn, for example, from Archer Roose whose sales of over 120,000 cases of canned wine owes much to its distribution through sports stadia.
And, just maybe, especially if you’re concerned at the fall-off in interest in wine among younger consumers, you might like to explore ways of talking to the buyers of those 100m Switch 2 consoles. While these pieces of equipment are popular with kids, 20% of users are aged 19-24, while 43% are 25-34. And they like doing stuff with other people. Maybe that could include enjoying a few glasses of wine.
