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Now we’re done with all 76 days of dry January, along comes the next burning issue. The last few months has seen a flood of articles and reports prophesying the demise of wine, due to a downward trend in sales over the last few years.
Much of the narrative concerns millennial and gen-Z consumers, who apparently don’t want to party like it’s 1999. Or even 2009. Could these more sober generations actually kill the future wine industry? Read the thousands of inflammatory headlines ignited in both specialist and generalist publications, and you might think so.
If you want to eyeball the sources, here are some links – a piece on why younger generations aren’t drinking as much wine as their parents, a recent NC Solutions consumer survey conducted in the US, and a very recent report on the state of the US wine industry from SVB. Then there’s Kara Daly’s considered take here on substack, or this 2022 piece from Eric Asimov, writing in the New York Times.
Who’d be a winemaker in 2024? But before getting too depressed, I want to take a closer look. Is it really as bad as people say?
Big is not Booming
If you scour the statistics, it becomes clear that the biggest losses in wine sales are in the mass-market sector. I use the phrase ‘commodity wine’ to describe what are usually budget
This Article was originally published on The Morning Claret
