I know several people who are distressed that their kids aren’t very interested in their birth year wines or even wine in general. Some of these people put away some pretty nice wines, which provides some solace.
-Al
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So if not the parents, and acknowledging those of us here are the exception and not the norm I wonder where most people’s interest was sparked.
I know for me it was from my ex who was a chef and lived and worked in Napa for years that initially opened my eyes to the world of wine.
For me, it was going to grad school not far from Northern California wine regions and visiting wineries, and one particular visit with a girlfriend and a visiting college classmate when we had an impromptu picnic at the bottom of the Sterling Vineyard tram including a bottle of their Chardonnay (they were a higher end winery back then). It was such a perfect day, and I decided I needed to learn more about this beverage that seemed to amplify the moment so beautifully. Bought some books. Went to wine stores to find some of those wines. Realized it was more cost effective to go to some wine store tastings. Met some similarly minded people (of various ages although almost all with much more disposable income). Just went from there.
-Al
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LOL. I guess you missed the '21 Burg EP pricing that was just released this month.
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For me, I would say it was from a combination of traveling and boredom. I’ve always loved to travel and tasting wine in different places was sort of like trying the local cuisine. Traveling around Europe in my early 20s gave me a chance to try some great wines at low prices. Since then, I’ve liked wine, but the pandemic gave me a chance to really dive into it and learn more and actually read books about wine and try a lot of different wines. I consider myself a newbie in the wine world, but I’m a few years into my deep dive of the world now.
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@larry_schaffer I’m approaching my mid 30’s, and I’m not influenced by how my parents drank. My dad was a a simple cocktail guy and my mom maybe drank 2-4 times per year. I’ll have cocktails while out, but never at home.
I think there is a laundry list of reasons why wine does not appeal to people my age. Top of the list I think is that the wine world is just very intimidating to people my age. I found wine in my mid 20’s through my in-laws, and probably would not have without them. I was lucky to have them opening a diverse range of wines which greatly helped ignite the flames of what is now a wine obsession. I would have never been at the place I am without them opening what they did, and on top of that opening bottles that pair well with the food we were having. Between price and sheer amount of diversity in the world of wine, most people my age do not know where to start and just fall back to cocktails or beer. Frankly, when out at a restaurant, most cocktails are much better than the dismal BTG lists at many restaurants. Another big thing I think are that people my age are much more willing to spend large amounts of money on in the moment experiences. I have friends that will be out to dinner and shows/concerts every weekend where they will be spending $500+/person for the night but cant fathom how I will spend $80 on a bottle of wine that I won’t drink for 10+ years. Obviously, there are a lot more details to this overall, which could be talked about at length, but these are some main factors IMO
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Thank you for the thoughtful reply - and it makes a great deal of sense.
I truly think our industry has ‘blinders’ on - we ‘assume’ that people will simply enjoy wine and cannot understand why young folks don’t. Your explanation is very much in line with what I hear daily in my tasting room - if you are just getting into wine and you step into a supermarket and look at the confusing wall of wines, you are apt to simply choose beer . . .
As far as BTG goes, I do believe there are, in general, better choices than say 20 years ago. Will most BTG wines ‘blow you away’? Probably not - but they are not ‘offensive’ for them most part . . .
But the pricing has forced consumers to look elsewhere. The general rule is that if you sell a wine by the glass for say $13, the restaurant’s cost on that bottle is $13 - they ‘cover their costs’ with the first pour. But I have seen an increasing trend of increasing that cost, making it that much more ‘unaffordable’ for most consumers, especially those our industry should be trying to empower to join in.
As I said above, I want more folks like you to speak up and make ‘the industry’, many on this board, and others understand that no matter ‘how good’ a wine is, there is no reason a young consumer should be enticed to want to try it unless (a) you understand what the consumer wants, (b) the industry and other consumers actually LISTEN to what consumers are asking for any saying and (c) understand that wine is a ‘luxury’, at all price points, and that no one needs it . . . and therefore we need to give them a reason to want to try it and enjoy it.
Keep posting my friend and thank you!
Cheers
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As I’ve mentioned on the other thread, these issues are more so akin to the younger generation (my generation) simply not understanding the potential of wine. I had mentioned previously that before I had my a-ha moment, I had thought wine was very linear to what I had experienced so far. It wasn’t until I had that a-ha moment that got me curious and the rest became history.
A big reason for the divide simply comes down to a lack of experience and curiosity with wine. In today’s time and age, it is not very easy for a non-wine drinker to come across enough wines to pique their specific interest/palate. Those type of wine experiences are usually found by hanging out with other wine drinkers or boutique wine shops, which a newbie would not be doing. Most likely, their experience is narrowed to picking whatever supermarket/mass produced wine that looks the best. To these new drinkers, they would not want to spend more time than it would take to buy liquor for cocktails or a new flavor of hard seltzer (Truly/White Claws/etc) because they do not see wine different enough at that point.
The best way for someone new to get into wine has and will always be drinking experience. If someone were to try one new wine once a month, the probability that they would find a wine that they like would be rather low, especially at the lower price points. It would likely take quite some time (years even) before they learn about their wine preferences. On the other hand, give someone an in depth tasting with 6+ different varietals and styles and it becomes a lot quicker to pin point their preference and to get them more interested into the wines that they liked. Unfortunately, not many newbies would go through the effort of doing that due to the reasons that you and me have stated already.
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All anecdotal observations
-There is no question Wine is making up less of the alcohol pie so to speak than it did say ten years ago
-Growth of spirits/cocktails seems to be a major reason
-Legalization or wider acceptance of cannabis seems to be a small factor
-In our state, CT, On-Premise biz makes up maybe 30% of the total of all the alcohol sales. Is there any documentation out there showing On-Premise accounts for 50% of wine consumption?
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I am 36. Been into wine for around ten years now.
My parents was mostly into beer. I really didn’t like the wine they served. I could get much better beers at a better price. I simply didn’t get it.
So there are two reasons for why i ended up interested in wine.
The first and most important one was by pure luck. I meet a good friend and his dad have collected wine for decades. The wine he brought when we cooked some food together blew my mind.
The second reason is that i live in Copenhagen. There is a lot of good options here. Also for a younger audience.
I do know quite a few people my age that are into wine. A common thing is probably that they are all doing pretty well economically. If you make less money i guess quality beer just makes more sense.
And then in Denmark there is just and overall trend of people under 60 has started to drink less overall.
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I think part of the demographic shift is due to changes in the beer and spirits industries. I think of where beer was 20 or 30 years ago compared with today, and the landscape is totally different. The craft beer movement and ubiquitous micro brew pubs have raised the beer game in a fundamental way.
Likewise, the craft cocktail movement has marketed itself as sexy and fun, and raised the bar there as well. Super premium spirits and diverse recipes are more commonly found at bars and restaurants, and are often cheaper than their generic wines on offer.
Wine, by contrast, has changed the least imho. Sure, the natural wine movement is out there but how many people even know it exists? The big media stories I remember over the last 20 years were about 2 buck chuck and Robert Parker, not any major trends or marketing shifts.
I think the wine industry could benefit from looking at things like the keto movement, which is huge in millennial circles. Dry wines are naturally low carb and offer so much more than the crappy beer counterparts out there. I would argue the same with spirits, where mixers are rarely low carb.
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Uneducated question based on unscientific data: Do you think part of the reason that BD14 is being overwhelmed with offers is that the wineries are seeing sales decline? Of course, not the highly allocated or highly sought after wines, but those in the second and third tiers.
Of course, it could also be the success of prior BDs.
Whatever the reason, good for me! Looking forward to BD14!
There are already plenty of wineries offering ‘light’ wines - with lower alcohol levels in the same vein ‘light beer’ attracted folks back in the day. And there certainly are plenty out there marketing themselves as ‘clean’ or ‘free of ‘nasty’ things in general’ . . . but to many, these come across as disingenous.
I think we need to look at craft beer and cocktails at the 30,000 foot level - what sparked the interest in these categories a few years back and why is it being sustained? We also need to break apart the concept of wines consumed at home and that marketing vs wines consumed on premise. As far as the latter goes, there really needs to be a better push on ‘consuming wine with food’ and helping young consumers understand the ‘culture’ of doing so - something that has not been done enough, and in simple terms, in this country.
Cheers
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I look back 30+ years to college days…
back then, the parties were all keg beer. better buzz for the buck my friend called kegs. also, if you really were a party-er, you drank Jack or jose cuevo tequila. the main point is that the youngsters, us at the time, were drinking to get drunk, not to enjoy the beverage itself. as we/I got older things changed. many still drink only beer, some stayed with the harder drinks and many, like myself, gravitated to wine. for me, always having wine with dinner when we went to my grandparents house, even when I was 12 (he said all good Italians drank wine, it was required) forged a lasting impression that good food, good wine and good conversation were a good thing.
I asked my son who is at Santa Barbara, and it seems things have not changed much. he does not drink wine except when he comes home from school. the main complaint I hear from him and his friends is cost. $15 bucks for a drinkable wine that the next day tastes terrible, so has to be finished that evening. that money buys a lot of beer. spend $10 more and you can get a decent (his words not mine) bourbon or tequila and that bottle will last a long time. and beer even longer, though I doubt they keep longer that the weekend. I told him to take a sat afternoon, drive an hour and do some wine tasting, seeing as he is in a prime location for it. bring your friends and get them into it. so they did and it seems they had a poor customer service experience. the wineries they went to, no idea who, treated them as typical, stereotyped college kids, looking for a good buzz and made the whole experience a bad one. I don’t think he will go back unless I visit him and take him along.
there are many things that go into it. my simpleton research seems to be, the cost of wine and drinking mainly to get drunk, making wine an expensive option compared to other alcohol. as they age, maybe those excuses will change, but habits are hard to break.
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John,
Send them my way 
Cheers!
College life is a different situation. I think we’re talking about adult life in the years following college when folks have real income to spend.
As an anecdotal point of one, my mid-20s daughter was visiting a while back and took part in a zoom tasting with Larry/Tercero wines. She is not a big wine drinker (not a big drinker in general - her generation seems more into weed or abstaining all together), but really enjoyed what she learned and loved the Tercero Petite Sirah we tried. I have since gifted her a couple of bottles, and whenever I give her and her roommates bottles of wine from my collection they exclaim that it’s the best wine they have ever tasted (fyi: I am NOT giving really expensive bottles to them, although their definition of “really expensive” is over $20). They just don’t want to spend that kind of money on the salaries they are making. But if they could engage in some fun, inexpensive wine tasting (where they were treated as intelligent people who wanted to learn and not young people just trying to get drunk), I bet they would get more into wine.
I also have middle-aged friends who shudder at the thought of paying more than $25 for a bottle of wine though. It’s their choice what to spend their money on, so I get it.
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The serving size is a really good point. 750 ml bottles are a really awkward size if you aren’t serving a group all at once. We just opened a bottle and didn’t really like it, so now we’re stuck either waiting to finish it as it gradually goes bad (or hopefully improves in future days) or just throwing it out. For a beer, you can buy a can or likely find it on tap somewhere and see if you like it first.
Single-serving cans of quality wine for ~$8 would be amazing and would also help avoid some of the freshness issue of glasses in restaurants. I wish something like this had taken off.
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I wondered about this, then vaguely remembered the days of my misspent youth. I wondered if part is just convenience? Wine can be a pain. Never mind glasses, did you remember the corkscrew? I forgot to bring one once, then carried one in my car for years. Then the cork broke, and I spent a lot of time trying to dig it out. My son, who will be 35 on Wednesday, drinks wine without much appreciation, but would rather drink beer. Beer is easy. Get 6 or 12 pack and toss them around. Can’t really do that with wine. Now that he and his friends are getting older, have kids of their own, I see a few of them getting interested in quality wine. Maybe wine is something to appreciate when you are slowing down enough to appreciate different things in life?
Some thoughts from the thread…
Another reason why beer and spirits make such inroads with younger demographics is that they are agriculturally stable, extremely high-margin products that can lead to companies wealthy enough to advertise on television and in movies, whether through commercials or product placement. Kids are seeing beer and spirit messaging in media long before they take their first drink, legal or not. (These same attributes highly incentive wholesalers to prioritize these products well ahead of wine for any placement opportunity)
To discover wine, like @Liz_Switzer did, I think happens when you have what I call a “geek” personality. (Hopefully that’s not taken in offense) In my experience, the kind of people who dive deep into their curiosity - people who travel for adventure, people who collect things, people who research things of interest, people with hobbies and passions - these are the people who often end up with wine - it’s the only drink that really has a never-ending reserve of stories and new experiences.
To discover wine like @ABell or @LasseK or how @Ann_Brown mentors her daughter, you need to have an “influencer” relationship. As maligned as that term has become in the era of social media, catching the wine bug often happens when someone trusted makes an effort to convince a newbie to give wine appreciation a real shot.
To me, this is the reason why I think wineries or trade organizations should be working hard to connect to influencers in other “geek” or “passion” topics. Look at the things that motivate subcultures. Look at the things that people spend discretionary income on. Unlike the usual comparisons of luxury goods and fashion, look beyond LVMH for ideas. Look at the people spending money on hi-fi equipment. Look at the people spending money on photography equipment. Look at the people buying collectible figures, collectible vinyl…people doing tabletop gaming…these aren’t people who are buying for the purpose of impressing other people - they’re satisfying themselves first. Those are wine people!
What else are people spending money on? Concerts, conventions, art shows, heck, even club nights! can be organized or sponsored by wineries. Little by little, Sonoma and Napa are starting to figure out that you can be in the driving seat when it comes to booking entertainment instead of begging a merciless wholesaler to get a wine on the concession list. And in these settings you have the opportunity to really present your product the way you want to.
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