"Millennials Now Ruining Wine As Well"

Interesting article on Wine-Searcher written by Blake Gray…

https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2019/01/millennials-now-ruining-wine-as-well

Some callouts I found interesting:

  • Overall wine sales in the US are actually down over the last six months – the first such drop in 25 years
  • Sales are down in Western Europe as well
  • Millennials, even the older ones, aren’t buying expensive wine
  • Believed younger people may see wine consumption as unhealthy
  • Bigger brands looking to shake things up with more innovative tasting rooms

Wineries should look in the mirror to understand why millennials are not buying wine. Prices are too high. Tasting fees at many wineries are too high. I would hate to be starting to buy wines now. I might have never gotten started drinking wine.

My cohorts and I will not stop until everything beloved by boomers is dead and buried and erased from the history books.

Who knew they were so smart?! [wink.gif]

there are plenty of wineries/tasting rooms which offer moderately priced wines (e.g. $25 - $40) and commensurately priced tasting fees ($15 - $25), often waived with purchases, so i’m not sure that’s the core issue.

as the article notes: the millennial wine taster visiting wine country is looking more toward an “experience” (i.e. food, winery/vineyard tour, vistas and photo ops for their IG) vs the traditional step-up-to-the-bar, taste a few wines and make a purchase. in my experience, the folks who prize the “experience” are also not necessarily the ones who are walking out with wines by the case. it may be a bottle or two, or just paying the tasting fee, but it’s more about spending time in at a place with friends and enjoying the scene, more so than making a wine purchase.

one other point: as wineries/tasting rooms shift their models to meet this demand, the amount of time patrons are spending at each “experience” grows, leading to less opportunities in a day of tasting to visit more than just a few spots, which then leads to less traffic in a market where volume is almost essential to survive.

The surging popularity of legal recreational weed is certainly having an effect on declining alcohol sales among millenials.

Seems like paying $25 for a mid level wine to a segment that pays over 70% of their net earnings to rent/mortgage, student loans, car payment and health/car insurance would be a financial stretch. Then add in cell phone, internet, cable, food, entertainment into the mix and a $25 bottle is not as affordable as say Coors Light or strait Cuervo to the head.

I won’t give them credit for much, but so far they have largely avoided the vanity sports (luxury cars, wine, and gated suburban housing). We will see what happens if or when they start their prime earning years. They have definitely been spending money on beer and bourbon.

this is kinda what i’m thinking. It’s really tough to determine how people are going to be spending money on vanity luxury goods when a large chunk are not in situations where they make enough money to do so.

I’m sure many of the baby boomers here weren’t buying $50-75 wines (whatever the dollar equivalent was) when they were 25-26 either and the cost of living wasn’t nearly as high back then.

I’m not a Millennial, but I’m buying less expensive wine than a few years ago. The wine industry benefited for years from rising prices, but at some point there is a breaking point, even for those who can afford it. It is rare that I am making multi bottle purchase for expensive wines. I’m definitely still buying high-end wines, but less often and not as many of them. I’ve almost stopped buying California Cabs (with the exception of Monte Bello and a couple others) and even those purchases are for a couple bottles at most. When the upper end of California Pinot hit $60+, I cut my purchases in half and moved to other varietals and other regions.

There will always be a market for high end wines, but IMO the number of wineries in California selling pinots at $60+ and cabs at $100+ will eventually decline.

I am technically a millennial (although towards the beginning of the loosely defined millennial window), and the component I struggle with the most is just how few other millenials there are to share wine with. All of my wine friends are getting on for at least 10 years older than me and in many cases 30 years older.

I do not buy that spirits have a greater popularity over beer as that article asserts, spirit consumption is increasingly down among my group of friends, and craft beer has gone up. The availability of craft beer increasing dramatically over the last 10 years would agree with that too - I don’t think we’re seeing generation X sitting in a bar much these days, vs their millennial counterpart.

As for the cost of wine…Napa has been out of reach for millennials for years and that’s nothing new. I don’t buy Napa unless I get lucky and come across a deal, and despite living in CA, travelling there does not appeal to me in the way that say Paso Robles or the Willamette Valley does. There is a swathe of local and foreign wine that is not only significantly cheaper, but at least equivalent in quality.

The idea of having an average bottle cost exceeding $100 in a region is bonkers to me (this is an assumption on my part, but I rarely read a positive report on a Napa wine that is sub $100). Somehow, and I realise how silly this statement sounds but it is absolutely the truth, Burgundy is more accessible to me than Napa.

The tasting experience criticism is in my view, a bit of a churlish diversion of the problem. The most valuable tasting experiences for me are those that are real. I want to speak to the winemaker, I want to see the barrel rooms and I want to learn about what goes on behind the scenes - the activity that makes the bottle possible. I would argue that anyone who is entirely satisfied merely by being treated like a king in a fancy room with a rep that’s internally gagging over the thought of selling 3 bottles of $500 wine to them, is the problem. There’s no interest in authenticity or understanding - just a recognition of a massive bill and how impressive that is to their guests.

But, all that being said, I am buying wine, probably significant amounts for someone in my age range that would put me in the very top percentiles. You don’t catch me buying Rousseau or Maybach though, and that’s for good reason.

I do find the blame game on millennials quite tiresome - I’m not sure how key markets of wine being inaccessible and uninteresting means we are ruining it.

I just turned 28 working in the business so an outlier, but I probably am drinking maybe 1-2 bottles a week, not that I don’t want more but I can’t afford to drink what I want all the time so I supplement with beer. I live in $25-$50 price range generally closer to $25 per bottle and will occasionally splurge for something I really want generally either Burgundy or N Rhone, but it is an interesting dynamic between my bosses who were able to afford Bordeaux/Burgundy/Napa etc… and myself who is trying to get our shop to find more up and coming regions that offer better value for the younger base too.

The rest of the article is pretty interesting and I agree with most of the article, could go in deep about my generation, friends, and what I’ve noticed, but think its been pretty well outlined why wine seems to be declining at least for now, It will be interesting to see as people my age enter our primes, get more established in their careers, start having kids etc… if wine jumps back up.

Well, I was paying < $10 for 82 Canon and $11 for 82 Cos

Posts to the effect of, “When Millennials reach their prime earning years, we’ll see how things change” seem to me to assume that Millennials will have prime earning years and spending power commensurate with generations that came before them. Presently, this seems like a very poor assumption.

Well, even 10-15 years ago those bottles today would be $100-150…for a boomer in the 90’s those would be equivalent to $200-300 bottles. And who says inflation is subdued?

Exactly. Generational effects are broad and sweeping and what has gone on before can change quickly.
Look at a whole host of things, like golf, for example. You won’t see millennials trying to tee off like people were in the 60’s.

My wife and I are 32 and we’ll probably open a bottle on most nights (two kids under 4 will do that to you!) and we spend far too much on wine…or maybe not enough, I don’t know. I’m a millennial and I can say the these “millennials are killing _______” articles are nothing but pure clickbait. I will say that it’s only in the last couple years that I’ve had the time and, more importantly, the money to really delve into wine so maybe just give this generation a few more years to find our feet and you’ll see that we’re the same hedonists as all the generations that came before!

As some one who is 28 the only reason i am really drink wine or on this board is because i happened to luck into a tasting group full of guys in there 60+ who have very deep cellar and are willing to share. There is no way outside of that i would have tasted must of the wine i have had and have to confidence to spend 75 on a bottle knowing that it can age.

On the tasting rooms price is a huge factor. When i talk to the older guys in the my group they talk about just stopping in and trying random tasting rooms and see what they like. When i went to napa every winery we stopped at was careful researched to look at the wine and experience and determine if we want to go. Winery need to find a way to reach younger people if your a small winery how will any found out about you because there is no more see a winery stop in.

31 year old here…average bottle price in my just under 500 bottle cellar is apparently $43. Thats a number I’m comfortable with given my current economics and the quality I can find, so I don’t see that changing materially upward any time soon.

I’m 25 and I consider myself quite fortunate to be able to afford Napa wines (the only region I collect, even though I’ve been encouraged to explore Bordeaux) and make several trips up to Napa Valley each year. The average bottle price in my 250-bottle cellar is about $85.

I do agree with the article, as I also look for an “experience” when going to taste wine, the reason being, the experience is better remembered with the wine, as opposed to just drinking the wine itself. When I visit 4-5 wine tasting bars on a single day, I’m tired of just tasting and taking notes by the 3rd tasting. I would 100% rather do 1-2 unique “experiences”, not only where I can learn more about the history and vines and getting to enjoy the estate, something that would help me remember how much I enjoyed their wines, but also get to know members of their team to become friends with and add/follow on social media.

Additionally, it is definitely true that prices (both tasting and bottle) in Napa Valley are getting too high. Many millennials have so many different hobbies, and have their feet in everything that its hard to invest a lot of their income into wine, so when my friends have their friends over for dinner, they’d rather spend more on dry-aged steak, for example, as opposed to adding a $200 bottle of Maybach to their meal. I’ve realized the best way to obtain wine that I enjoy is through allocation, so I have severely cut back on my in-store purchases, so that I can perhaps get to visit or “experience” a tasting with them in the future (and not pay $150 per person for the tasting).

With all that being said, I don’t believe millennials should take all the blame, especially when wine prices are reaching unbelievable highs. To think that Colgin, Abreu, and BOND (just to give some examples) are now nearing $600 a bottle compared to being at the $300 per bottle price point a few years back shows how inaccessible fine wine truly is. Of course, the student loans don’t help either, but ehh…