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1 0 6 V I N E YA R D & W I N E RY M A N A G E M E N T | M a y - J u n e 2 016 w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m END POST TYLER COLMAN h e C e n t e r s f o r D i s e a s e C o n t r o l r e c e n t l y d e a l t a potential blow to wine. Yes, it seems improbable that the government agency doing very good work fighting global threats such as Ebola and the Zika virus would set its sights on wine. But it's true: The CDC recently issued guidelines recommending that sex- ually active women of reproductive age who aren't using contraception should abstain from alcohol. In case this is the first time you've heard the news, you can pick your jaw up off the floor now. This is a blunt approach to achieving policy ends that could reverberate across t h e w i n e i n d u s t r y. There was broad push- back to the recom- mendation, with the W a s h i n g t o n P o s t c a l l i n g i t " i n c r e d - ibly condescending." Jezebel, the well-read blog that focuses on women's issues, called it an "unrealistic warning." As such, it risks reducing faith in government warnings and — more to the point here — it could hurt the image of wine. The policy is out of step with current perceptions of wine, which view it as part of a healthy lifestyle, in moderation. OK, to those policy ends: The CDC wants to reduce or eliminate the tragic public health problem of fetal alcohol syndrome, a condition subsumed under the diagnostic term fetal alcohol spectrum disor- der (FASD). The CDC admits it's hard to peg the exact rate of infants affected by the disorder but puts the range at 0.2 to 1.5 infants per The news of the "French paradox" on 60 Minutes in 1991 sent people reaching for red wine and gave wine a healthier aura — even if it's one that can't be mentioned in win- ery marketing materials. Thanks in part to the efforts of Julia Child and Robert Mondavi, wine came to be seen as part of relaxed meals in the European tradition. Public policy has reflected that of late, with less of a puritanical bent. (Paradoxically, France has been on an opposite trajectory — becoming more puri- tanical — during the past couple of decades.) Per capita wine consump- tion in the United States has grown every year since 1994. So it's fair to say Americans are into wine now, even if our per capita statistics are still well below those of Europe. Women make 57% of all wine purchases in the United States. Women also edge out men to make up 54% of the wine-drinking popu- lation. And millennial women, the youngest consumers, are very into wine. (Among millennials, wine faces particularly fierce competition from craft beer among male drink- ers.) Therefore, the CDC recom- mendation targets a big group of current and future consumers. Will this policy shift toward the puritanical view of alcohol stop wine consumption in its tracks? No. But it's a headwind to consider. Tyler Colman, author of the wine blog Dr. Vino, teaches wine class- es at New York University and the University of Chicago, and wrote t h e b o o k " W i n e P o l i t i c s : H o w Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink." Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwmmedia.com. (Opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of Vineyard & Winery Management.) A Pregnant Pause 1,000. The agency says it costs $4 billion per year to treat FASD cases in the United States. This is a laudable goal. But is a blanket ban the best approach for millions of women? Sure, why not err on the side of caution and abstain while pregnant? Nobody's arguing against that — even the French have an illustration on wine labels now meant to discourage drinking during pregnancy. (At least nobody is arguing against it publicly — a doctor told me that, while at a medical conference, he met up with his pregnant wife, an obste- trician, and two of her obstetrician colleagues, who also were preg- nant. They all had wine together.) But expanding the ban to women who aren't nec- essarily even "trying" is where the policy runs into trouble and what irked so many of the initial com- mentators. This is where the policy seems like a blast from the moraliz- ing past. Wine in America has oscillated on what could be described as a puritanical/Medi- terranean axis. The puritans took a dim view of alcohol; but later, Thomas Jefferson, reflecting his time in France, enjoyed wine pre- cisely because he saw it as a drink of moderation. By the 1980s, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond was able to push through the "government warning" language that's on every wine label to this day. And the efforts of social issues groups like MADD demonized all drinking. Things started to swing more in a Jeffersonian/Mediterranean direction for wine in the 1990s.