The New Date Night

And Wine's Role in It

As I talked about in last week’s post, Why Isn’t Wine a Moving Day Beverage?, wine is rarely marketed the way it’s actually enjoyed. Not long after writing that, I came across an Eater article, The State of Date Night Dining, which touches on how people are rethinking experiences and noticed the connection.

Since the pandemic, date night has undergone a change. Where once couples might have splurged on a high-end meal for date night, now, more often than not, it’s a home-cooked dinner, a favorite takeout order, or in the case of one couple mentioned in the article, Conservas Saturday—a dedicated tinned fish and wine night (so fun!).

The cool thing is that date night already has a long association with wine—so the heavy lifting of marketing it that way has already been done for us.

A friend-date I did at the beach: oysters and canned wine! (Photo by me, Heather Daenitz of Craft & Cluster)

What Date Night Looks Like Now

What I really love about this article is that it doesn’t just focus on one version of date night—it talks to a variety of people, each with their own way of making time for connection.

One couple with kids described how their date night decisions are based more on comfort than cuisine:

"We don’t always get a chance to talk without a toddler pulling on our shirt and telling us that they need more water, so if a place is too loud or the chairs are weird, it’s not gonna be a place we go back to."

Another couple has a ritual that starts with a walk, then putting on a record before making a spread of tinned seafood and snacks.

Then there’s the couple who went to a Michelin-starred restaurant for their anniversary… then hit Taco Bell on the way home:

"It’s a way to extend the date and in general, we also don’t take ourselves too seriously. We can do this fancy thing, but we don’t consider ourselves fancy people.”

And yet another pair—who I should mention, work in food & hospitality—realized the “traditional” idea of date night didn’t actually fit them:

"When we first got together, it was a lot more like, ‘This is what we’re supposed to do: the sit-down meals, spending money.’ As we got to know each other better, we realized that’s maybe not what’s most aligned with what we like doing and how we like spending our time. What we really love to do is sit on our roof, garden, and listen to new music."

Wine is Already There

What’s wild to me is that most of these date nights fit perfectly with the culture of wine—we just need to connect the dots for people.

Here are some ideas for what wineries can do to incorporate a more varied and relatable approach to marketing their wines for date night:

• Show Wine in Different Date Night Scenarios: Instead of just showing the usual candlelit dinners, highlight how your wines fit into more casual nights at home—pizza and wine on the couch, enjoying wine in the kitchen while cooking and talking, wine and board games, etc

• Meet People Where They Are: Acknowledge that many people are choosing date nights at home for financial or lifestyle reasons. Position your wines as the perfect addition to a DIY wine and cheese night, a movie marathon, or a home-cooked meal.

• Make It Interactive: Encourage your audience to share their real-life date nights! Ask: What’s your go-to date night wine? What are you doing for date night this week?

I’d love to hear from you—whether you work in wine or just enjoy drinking it. What does date night look like for you? Do you go out or stay in? How does wine fit into the proceedings?

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