We live in a time when everything happens fast. We think fast, decide fast, consume fast. We’ve grown used to processing information instead of letting it settle. And wine—although it seems to belong to a slower, more contemplative world—has often come to be treated the same way: evaluated, classified, checked off. We like to believe we analyze. That we know. That we choose knowingly. But more often than not, we simply repeat what we’ve already heard, follow labels, scores, trends. In that sense, we’re not very different from a machine. Perhaps that’s precisely why the idea of thinking with wine, rather than just about wine, feels so relevant today.

Chris Howard speaks about this distinction with a clarity that makes you stop and reflect. There is a subtle but essential difference between thinking about wine and thinking with wine. In the first case, wine becomes an object. In the second, it becomes an experience. A pretext for paying closer attention to what you feel, what you perceive, what happens inside you. (“Rethinking wine means shifting from thinking about wine to thinking with wine.”)

Maybe that’s why conversations about wine can no longer be separated from the way we live and consume—especially in a context where the numbers tell one story, and the reality in the glass sometimes tells another.

Statistically, Romania produces around four million hectoliters of wine. It sounds impressive. But if we look more closely, we see that the volume of certified wine that actually reaches the market, according to ONVPV data, is under one million hectoliters per year. The gap between these figures says a lot about market fragmentation, self-consumption, wine that never enters commercial circulation, and how small the visible part of the industry truly is.

At the same time, shelves are filling up with imported wines. Italy, France, and Spain lead the way, joined increasingly by the Republic of Moldova. Correct, consistent wines—sometimes surprisingly affordable. Wines that ask little of the consumer and require little emotional involvement. You buy them, you drink them, you move on.

In this context, Romanian wine finds itself in a delicate position. It can no longer compete on price alone, yet it has not fully built a coherent narrative around identity, meaning, and distinction. And the consumer, caught between promotions and quick recommendations, often ends up choosing by reflex rather than conviction. Perhaps the real problem isn’t a lack of quality, but a lack of attention.

Because wine asks for time. It asks for stillness. It asks for the willingness to notice not only what’s in the glass, but what happens inside you as you drink it. What draws your attention. What moves you. What you rush to judge. What you miss.

Maybe this is where the idea of A Glass of Wine a Day truly begins: with the desire to slow down and become more conscious in our relationship with wine. Not as an automatic gesture, not as a daily checkbox, but as a moment of real attention. A glass that doesn’t demand haste, but presence. That doesn’t come with answers, but with questions.

Because when you start drinking wine this way, something changes. Not only in how you choose a bottle, but in how you relate to taste, to time, to value. And at that point, the difference between a Romanian wine and an imported one is no longer just a matter of price or origin, but of relationship.

Perhaps the future of wine doesn’t lie in bigger volumes or more aggressive promotions. Perhaps it lies in this return to attention. To the simple act of being present. To the courage to feel, not just to evaluate. And if there is one direction truly worth exploring in the years to come, maybe it is this: learning, once again, to drink wine as humans—not as algorithms.