Which Generation Drinks the Most Wine?

Have you ever wondered which generation drinks the most wine? In the last few years, surveys done by the Wine Market Council have noted a huge uptick of wine consumption in one generation in particular. Which generation?

The answer may surprise you.

The Wine Market Council Survey Results

The Wine Market Council (WMC) surveys a crop of “high-frequency” drinkers or those who consume wine several times per week. The segment of high-frequency drinkers consumes 90 percent of all wine consumed in America.

The 2015 results are telling. Out of 1,200 high-frequency drinkers surveyed, the generational breakdown showed the following:

• Baby Boomers: 30%
• Gen Xers: 20%
• Millennials: 42%

Baby Boomers are no longer in the lead of wine consumption in the United States in 2015. In fact, 2015 was an important year for millennials in this survey, as the last millennial reached drinking age in July of 2015.

Not only do millennials lead the pack on wine consumption with a whopping 3.1 glasses of wine in a sitting on average, but they also score higher in another portion of the survey as well. US wine production is also growing rapidly with states not normally known for wine (ex. best wineries in Colorado) starting to produce quality products and increasing consumption nationwide.

Millennials Have More Varied Tastes

Not only did the survey results show that Millennials are more willing to part with money for a good wine, with 17% reporting they had spent over $20 on a bottle of wine in the month before taking the survey, but they also reported diverse tastes as well.

The Wine Market Council discovered that millennials had bought a wine from Australia, Italy, and France in the last three months. When a similar survey inquiring about these three regions was conducted in 2012 was compared to these answers, it was discovered that purchases from every region had increased. What this means is that millennials are buying more wine from more regions of the world and reveling in diverse tastes more than their predecessors.

Wine is a Global Adventure for Millennials

Though Millennials are willing to part with more money for a good bottle, it seems that the win could be sourced from anywhere. 30% of high-frequency millennials who drink wine had bought it from the following regions in the three-month window before the survey:

• Washington
• Oregon
• Chile
• Argentina
• Germany
• Portugal
• South Africa
• Greece
• Austria
• New York
• New Zealand
• Spain

A large number of locations from this list saw more sales to millennials than their Baby Boomer counterparts. However, there was one region where Baby Boomers were found to be more likely to buy from than millennials:

California.

Millennials Like Sparkling Wine

Millennials are also shown to enjoy experimenting with styles of wine as well. Sparkling wine has grown to 9 percent of off-premise sales, according to a Nielsen survey. In fact, Prosecco has doubled its share of the bubbly market along with other similar Italian sparkling wines.

The pink popular summer wine, Rosé, is also increasing sales at an admirable rate. In the 2015 survey, millennials spent five times the amount of cash they spent on premium rosé, in 2011.

Millennials are also consuming Malbec, Moscato, Pinot Noir, and Sauvignon Blanc.

Millennials are Changing the Wine Retail Industry

Millennials have demonstrated their appreciation of wine so much that wine retail practices are changing to accommodate this generation. As millennials are always on the go and immersed in technology, retail has changed to reflect with wine subscriptions programs, apps, and even wine available in cans.

Wine packaging means very different things to millennials than it ever did to baby boomers and Gen Xers. In fact, retail reports are showing that millennials really don’t care all that much about how long wine is aged. They also don’t care about bottles, seals or whether their wine has corks or screw-tops. Things like wine social media strategy can have just as big of an impact on millennials as the type of top did for older generations.

The younger generations fascination with organic products is also appearing in the wine industry as well. Organic wine has begun to grow as an industry, Infiniti Research reports. In fact, the organic wine industry is forecasted to grow by 10 percent year over year for the next four years.

The Brandsmen specialize in Wine Branding Strategy for wineries. Please contact a Brandsmen today if you’re in need of website design, or digital marketing and branding services for your vineyard.