My grandfather went from kerosene to AOL. One life. That kind of speed creates a craving for something slower — something that anchors you to a specific time and place. Wine might be the most powerful nostalgia machine ever invented, because every bottle carries something almost nothing else does: a year. In this solo episode, I explore why that year matters, how wine bridges generations at a dinner table, and why a bottle of 2019 will still taste like 2019 long after we've forgotten what that year felt like. In a world moving at the speed of light, wine moves at the speed of seasons. That's not quaint. That's essential.

The wine industry has a generational problem — and almost nothing it believes about it is true.

Pauline Vicard runs ARENI Global, the leading international think tank on the future of fine wine. Her team studied how young people in six cities — Paris, London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai — actually get into fine wine. They started with six hypotheses. Only one held up.

In this conversation, Pauline and Jon get into what the research actually says: why parents don't pass wine down (friends do), why women enter at equal rates and then disappear in their 30s, why the "$18 glass" problem is quietly killing wine's consumer base, why Succession and White Lotus have done more damage to fine wine than any health study, and why the industry's bottle-selling business model may be reaching its expiration date.

Plus — Pauline's free consulting for Jon as he opens Preface Wine: how to curate a room, why young people don't go out for wine (they go out for each other), and how to "monetize friendship" without making it feel transactional.

Guest: Pauline Vicard — Co-Founder & Executive Director, ARENI Global (https://areni.global)

Host: Jon Frutkin (@winewithjon) — lawyer turned collector turned wine bar owner, opening Preface Wine in Delray Beach, FL.

Eric LeVine found wine "hopelessly intimidating" — until a 1999bike trip through Tuscany changed everything. A few years later, he built CellarTracker during a Microsoft sabbatical. It's now the world's largest wine community: 13+ million tasting notes, 175 million bottles tracked, nearly a million users.

We talk about what two decades of community data reveal about how people actually engage with wine, why he avoided gamification, and what the industry gets wrong about welcoming newcomers.

Guest: Eric LeVine — Founder & CEO, CellarTracker

WineWithJon — new episodes every Tuesday.

Connect: @winewithjon | jon@winewithjon.com