Tag Archives: Millennials

Courtesy of Wine Access

My wife and I enjoyed our first wine trip since COVID recently. We spent a week traveling through the Central Coast AVA in California, focusing on the newer wineries with higher professional critic scores. Having completed a large sampling, I found some interesting trends.

Demand for Boomer Wine Profiles is Diminishing

I asked a couple common questions of each tasting room manager:

• Are you noticing changing wine preferences recently?
• What wines are younger customers preferring and why?

Surprisingly, the answers were fairly consistent. By the end of the trip, a wine strategy seemed to be emerging. The typical Baby Boomer generation red wine style was not as popular as in the past… fruity, easy drinking (low-med acid/low tannin), lots of toasted oak and 15% alcohol. What I have come to call the “Caymus Profile”. In response to changing demand, a new profile seemed to be emerging…

Wineries are Changing Wine to Match Younger Palates

Most wineries were developing a two tier offering based on generational preferences:

• Regular Release wines for Millennials and Gen Z at a lower price point and Reserve Release wines for Boomers at a higher price point. The younger generations were looking for Rose and Sparkling options.
• The more raucous younger customers were visiting tasting rooms on the weekends and the older customers were staying away at those times and visiting during the week.
• Wines for Millennials and Gen Z were focusing on a new profile: 13-14% alcohol, high acid, low tannin and no oak. I have never seen so many red wines fermented and aged in concrete as on this trip… or so much neutral oak.
• The old Boomer wine profile (defined above), was being saved for the older guests, more able to spend on the pricier option.

The younger wine profile worked for me, but would not be appropriate for bottle aging more than five years. The tasting managers laughed at me when I asked about wines for cellaring. Hard to argue, as the numbers are clear: 92-95% of all wine purchased is consumed in less than 48 hours. Any wine where the tannin level went up and seemed more ageable… I found myself wishing for oak.

Boomer Style Wines are not Going Away… Yet

We stopped in at a few of the older profile wineries: Justin, Herman Story, Beckmen. A full line-up of the wines I am used to. The Boomer profile has not been my preference, so the last 10 years my red wine purchases from Italy and France have increased. More along the lines of: high acid, med+ tannin, 25-50% new French or Hungarian oak and 13-14% alcohol. This matches my palate better. Oak barrels are expensive and are usually rotated through a max of three vintages and then discarded, while concrete containers can be re-used virtually forever. Red wines aged in concrete will change the cost calculation for wine substantially.

The Future of U.S. Wine

As Boomer generation wine consumption continues to fall, Millennials and Gen Z palates will drive the industry. Younger generations tend to drink more wine without food, than with… so, the wine industry will come under increasing pressure to compete with hard seltzers, ciders and cocktail beverage options. You would think this trend would be driving per bottle pricing down… but the data shows that Gen Z (especially) is much more adventurous in their wine consumption and is actually spending more per bottle than the current average. These are interesting times for the wine industry and some wineries are responding to these new trends – as growth in wine consumption slows in the U.S. Let me know if any of you are noticing these same trends. Happy Holidays!