I am technically a millennial and I can confirm I have the mindset of less, but better. I’d rather drink a handful of absolute bangers, rather than dozens of good, but not great wine.
Millennials hold less than 10% of U.S. wealth despite being a larger percentage of the population as boomers - who hold more than 50%.
We’re broke. ![]()
Bartles & Jaymes (or some spellings somewhat like that).
Any links to her stuff? I see this, with a breakdown of consumption by generation, but it’s pretty meaningless. No adjustment for population denominators, simply what % of drinkers are in each generation. Nothing about spend/bottle broken down by generation.
Wow, you’re telling me the cohort just entering their highest earning years have less accumulated wealth than the cohort exiting their earning years? Not exactly a meaningful data point.
Not meaningful to a discussion on how much money they spend? ![]()
Not particularly meaningful because it doesn’t say anything about whether such a wealth distribution is anomalous. After all, isn’t the discussion supposed to be about why younger generations are not purchasing in the same way that older generations did previously?
No, because it appears there’s no historical data and everyone is talking about purchases today.
Here is a Forbes Article that she published last year with data from a study that is done every two years going back to 1997.
If one wants to dismiss it because it doesn’t fit whatever selected criteria they have, then so be it. But she has consistently published articles on how wine buying is up over the long term and that Millenials are buying wine. It just isn’t the way that previous generations bought (and the same can be said about those generations compared to the generations before them)
Deleted
Thanks, that contains a lot more specifics.
This supports my musing that Millennials haven’t been buying enough wine in the recent past to keep up with the Boomer age out decline possibly because they simply are young where wine isn’t cool and/or they have less disposable income. So the wine industry is in a lull now, but as they age we may see wine enter another boom phase.
This I certainly agree with. Or to put it slightly differently, we’re in a recalibration period.
BMO has shown that while wine volume sold since 2018 is down, overall $$ spent is up a good bit in that timeline. Which also tracks with less wine being drunk, higher caliber being drunk.
And if we basically use the age of 35 as a point for when people turn more into wine consumers, then that means that are still a lot of millenials that haven’t gotten to that age yet and certainly not Gen-Z.
Millennials are in their 30s and 40s. They are already well into their earning years and the massive disparity is not going to be solved in the next ~15 years.
The basic costs of living are also exponentially higher so there is far less opportunity to accumulate wealth - or buy lots of expensive wine.
In a nut shell: People aren’t going out for afterwork happy hour with colleagues anymore, which is another example of people drinking less/spending less on alcohol.
For those looking for more on Gen Z, it includes this article:
This is an interesting article, at the intersection of drinking culture, work culture, and socializing culture. Afterall, one of the rising explanations for declining birth rates (among many other social ills) is that people are not as comfortable socializing and building relationships anymore.
I think for society, it’s probably a net benefit to move away from some of the more toxic elements of happy hour culture. But, there is still a need to gather!
In our department, we alternate weeks of department-funded happy hour and department-funded tea and cookies.
My buddies still meet for drinks
All good
#okboomer
I am unfamiliar with the wine writer mentioned above, but including this advertisement in an “article” on the wine industry is credibility destroying for the piece imo, and suggests non-existent editorial standards.
“At Scheid Family Wines, Heidi Scheid, Executive Vice President, said, “Millennials and Gen Z share a different relationship with wine then their parents did. They appear to embrace moderation, which is actually a good thing! The greater focus on health and wellness from the younger generations inspired our development of our zero sugar, low alcohol wine option, Sunny with a Chance of Flowers .”
Sorta neither here nor there, but a Forbes “contributor” piece is basically a blog post. That person might have emailed you that quote, but that doesn’t mean you have to include it if your goal is a serious piece of analysis.
What filtering of the data produced these numbers? They are in no way representative of the US wine market. The average price of a bottle sold in the US is somewhere around $11 (or was last I checked, maybe a year ago)