Sacramento, Calif. -- In creating a lineup for the 2009 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, program director Dr. John Thorngate said he and 28 others held to a single mantra: "Show me the message." And on Thursday morning, that message was change.

Speaking to a crowd of winemakers, grapegrowers and other industry leaders, four speakers addressed the importance of social networking sites, making wine a part of American culture and connecting with the Millennial generation.

Wine writer Paul Lukacs offered the perspective of someone on "the edge of the industry" with an eye toward history. In the late 1800s, he said, wine was poised to become part of daily American life. Recent immigrants already were in the habit of drinking wine with meals, and many Prohibitionists favored a ban on alcohol that included an exception for wine. But winemakers viewed the fortified wines served in saloons as a cash cow, and by not differentiating their product from the beer and spirits sold in saloons, they aided in its ban. Reverberations from that choice still are felt in the North American wine industry--Americans haven't reverted to their previous traditions and embraced wine as a cultural norm.

"Bring wine to the home. Bring wine to the supper table.…For a long time we have presented wine as something special, as something fancy, not as something (consumers) should have every day," Lukacs said.  "We've already succeeded at getting wine on the table at the Four Seasons in New York--that was 30 years ago. The challenge is getting wine on the table of the busboy at the Four Seasons, and we're not there yet.

"For the first time, I think, in history, we are poised to really make wine a foundational part of the American lifestyle."

Millennials

Part of that change lies in the hands of the new generations of wine drinkers. John Gillespie, president of the Wine Market Council, presented a study of 600 people polled in April 2008 and October 2008. The Millennial generation (those between age 15 and 32) are the largest generation since the Baby Boom that followed World War II. According to Gillespie's study, that age group also drinks the most wine. Millennials polled were the most likely to belong to wine clubs, the most likely to visit wine bars, and they were the only group that still reported buying more wine than the year before--even after the stock market crash of 2008.

Also, since some members of the Millennial generation are not yet 21, "You've got wine drinkers in the pipeline," Gillespie said, with an average of 4 million turning 21 each year.

Of course, communicating with Millennials presents another challenge. Jim Trezise, president of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, said that the old ways of communication are failing, and if the wine industry wants to stay relevant, it must adapt.

"If you go back to President Obama's campaign, a lot of his success was brought about by the change in traditional media. He set up a system that had never existed before, and it was very much seamless," Trezise said, referencing Obama's adoption of Facebook, text messaging, e-mail updates and other technology through which the campaign communicated information about fundraising, rallies and volunteer opportunities.

Courtney Cochran, a certified sommelier and wine consultant, spoke extensively about the ways in which wineries can communicate in the digital age. In addition to groups such as Wine 2.0 and the OpenWine Consortium, many wineries have created pages on websites Facebook and MySpace. The microblogging site Twitter allows users to ping their contacts with periodic updates about the latest releases, events and updates.

"We are in an unprecedented era of connectivity," Cochran said, adding that when creating your brand image, "You don't have to wait for someone else to declare you the best."

In spite of the plethora of connection options, Cochran believes that the wine industry has missed out on one very important trend. According to a Nielsen survey, one in five households reports having a gourmet chef. The "foodie" phenomenon has reached a fever pitch, and yet, "In the foodie culture, wine is still a sideline," she said.

So while the Food Network has sent several unknown chefs into the far-reaches of stardom (the number of "foodie" shows has tripled since 2000, Cochran said), few people in the wine industry have achieved such status. Meanwhile, neglecting the foodie cultural phenomenon is an expensive mistake: Through his daily video blog Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuk regularly talks to chefs, then broadcasts their chats on the site. Since starting the service on tv.winelibrary.com, retails sales at Vaynerchuk's Wine Library have grown from $4 million to a whopping $50 million.

Making the connection between wine and food doesn't have to mean beating down the doors of the highest-end restaurants, Lukacs reaffirmed. It means getting into America's kitchens.

"Emeril is not the big star," he said. "Rachel Ray is the big star. And what does she do? She tells you how to make food at home."