I’m super curious how the bourbon boom and associated auctions has impacted wine as well. I feel like 10-15 years ago if I went to friends house we’d be drinking wine, now it’s 90% bourbon. It’s even become kind of like wine where we sample multiple bottles instead of just pulling out a bottle and sipping through that all night. Let’s also not forget about the popularity of craft cocktails, I feel spoiled for choice these days.
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Secondary market price of Bourbon has fallen pretty hard.
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Recently yes, but compared to 10 years ago?
Which is making it easier to get back into. Quite frankly I abandoned basically any bourbon hunting the last 5-7 years. Now that secondary is coming down and distiller/producer stocks are rising finding interesting bottles on the shelf is becoming a thing again 
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and we’ve seen a “collapse” of the craft beer market (it’s still vastly stronger than it was in 2011, it’s just not what it was in 2016).
Basically, some of these things that Gen-Xers and Millenials were buying instead of wine have fallen off. The question remains, does that mean they will find their way back into wine? Wine does trend towards an older demographic. How much of the dip in sales is more of a recalibration than something more long-term? (I’m just asking questions here)
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Not sure why that matters?
I’ve found that no matter what the fad is, it brings people back to wine.
Remember Zima, MIke’s Hard Lemonade, Smirnoff Ice, Not Your Father’s Root Beer, and so on.
I don’t know what the long game is for the hard seltzers. That’s already seen tough days for a lot of brands, but not all.
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Completely agree.
imo, Hard Seltzers are likely here to stay entirely because of how well they work for summer cocktails and summer drinking.
I think the point @ChrisJames made is pretty pertinent to what’s going on at this moment. The boomer generation drank pretty heavily. Their kids (aka us) saw that and want something different. We’ve seen that millennials are spending on wine, they just aren’t consuming at the rate of their parents. So……how does the industry pivot?
Craft beer went too childish and playing too hard into nostalgia imo with the pastry stouts and triple IPAs or hazy IPAs. Leaning into Pilsners worked and does work, but it’s a different beer consumer that seeks those out. (before anyone wants to @ me here, this is pure observation and opinion)
While the immediate sales are down vs 2 years ago, the trend line is still up even with all of the disruptions to life we’ve experience since 2019.
Honestly, I’m kinda excited to see what happens. “New” regions will emerge as a hot spot and new winemakers will emerge as the cults
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I’ve yet to see apples to apples numbers w/r/t Boomer consumption normalized to current Millennials and/or Gen Z age ranges that convinces me that’s true.
Could it be that Boomer consumption increased with age and Gen X is smaller, so less overall consumption and Millennials are bigger, but we won’t see similar numbers from Millennials for another decade or two?
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Liz Thach MW has written articles on this a few times and they’ve been linked in these threads. Basically, Boomers have drunk more and spend around $36 per bottle on average. Millenials drink less but spend around $68 per bottle. She is about as good as it gets when it comes to the business of wine analysis as it gets.
Could millenial consumption grow with age? Absolutely. But as it stands right now, Millenials are drinking less yet spending more
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Sure, today, but that’s what I’m saying. Boomers have way more wealth currently, so of course they spend more. Show me some stats that compare Boomer consumption 30-40 years ago indexed for inflation and then we can talk.
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Honestly, I lament the loss of wine coolers at the grocery store. Bartels and James (believe it or not) started my change in palate from beer to wine. I think it’s easy to discount how important the acclimation process is: most youngsters start with the cheap stuff and the sweet stuff, and end up in fine wine, fancy bourbon, etc. If everyone just focuses on the end of the line, the people walking the trail get less and less every year…Oh wait, that’s what we’ve got!
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okay, but the question is constantly:
why aren’t millenials drinking?
we can only look at today to analyze it. The answer is that they are, they are drinking less than their parents but spending more per bottle at a close to 2x clip
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They are young and broke? It’s apples and oranges to compare kids to wealthy, retired people when it comes to expenditures.
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that hasn’t been said in the analysis. Nor has it been implied. Broke people aren’t dropping $65+ on a bottle. It’s just that Millenials will drink less to drink better. That is the correlation.
Just take some time to read what Liz Thach has written. She knows more about this stuff than all of us combined and has the data to match
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If my family/kids are any indication, it’s a combination of things: good PSA/education about the dangers of drinking (including drinking and driving), seeing family members/others at parties drinking too much and acting silly/stupid, having a friend/family member who got hurt or went to rehab due to drinking, and having a less permissive attitude around schools (my high school had photos in the yearbook with kegs back in the 70s and early 80s, and now kids can get kicked out of school for drinking off campus or out of state). Generally, they see no upside to it.
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Seconding ‘the drink less to drink better’
I don’t drink on the regular but would prefer to wait for special occasions and open better bottles as opposed to reaching for the nearest bottle of Kirkland (as good as they are) while watching tv on the couch every night.
Or waiting to go to a winery to try their lineup or for a wine dinner or event with friends.
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I also think a lot of people my age don’t know where to start or haven’t yet had the ‘epiphany moment’ that so many of us had. I’ve had a few friends that just need a little push. They see the orange label of Veuve and think ‘that’s great champagne’ but haven’t been exposed to a grower champagne that’ll rock their socks off. Or grab a red from Trader Joe’s but haven’t been exposed to truly transformative Bordeaux. They want to learn but see all of these different varieties and regions and don’t know where to start.
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This has likely been a problem as old as time. But I do think with places like IG/Reddit that are used more by Millenials and Gen-Z versus forums like this that people have access to at least some sort of information if they choose to find it. There is a lot of information out there that people can find if they do some digging. Of course, as you mentioned, you have to know where to start (easier said than done)
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The bulk of millennials are aged 30-40. They certainly aren’t young, nor are they kids, nor are they “broke”. This is a rather tired stereotype by this point.
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