"Ecology and evolution have as much to offer to wine as wine has to offer to ecology and evolution". With this sentence, we recently summarized our vision of wine fermentation as an ideal model system for exploring fundamental questions in ecology and evolution. At the same time, we have come to realize that meaningful progress in wine yeast research cannot be achieved without first recognizing—and simplifying—wine as a dynamic microbial ecosystem governed by general ecological and evolutionary principles. We recognize that wine researchers, community ecologists, and evolutionary biologists often come from different technical and theoretical backgrounds. However, we believe that, despite using different vocabularies, they are working toward common goals. Bridging these disciplinary differences and aligning their knowledge and perspectives is the first step we aim to take with the simultaneous publication of these two perspective articles in the sister journals Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology.