The Wine Institute’s statistics indicate a -5% decline in table wine volume from 2018 to 2023, falling from 861 million to 822 million gallons. Winemetrics saw a more dramatic drop in on-premise By-the-Glass (BTG) distribution, falling -23% during the same period using and identical set of 118 chain restaurants for each year. This obvious trend can no longer be ignored. I remember years ago that wine industry pundits insisted that, when Millennials and Gen Z reached a certain age, they too would embrace wine as the preferred alcoholic beverage as their Boomer and Gen X parents did. Only it didn’t happen and anyone with any remote knowledge of wine’s primacy among the older folks would know that. First, wine was appealing to Boomers because it wasn’t what their parents drank, which was primarily American beer and mediocre spirits. I began drinking wine in college in the early 1970s because it was exotic, interesting and offered a wide array of flavors. It would also complement food far more effectively than its grain-based counterparts. Also, wine was able to achieve widespread acceptance and primacy among Boomers because it had no competition. The 1980s gave us a proliferation of wine bars and fine dining venues that catered to wine drinkers. Craft beer would not become widespread until the mid-1990s and artisanal spirits didn’t impact the market until the 2000s. So, in essence, wine’s ascendency was a free ride, without significant competition. That is not the case today. Wine has to re-establish its relevance and appeal to younger consumers and is suffering stiff headwinds from a vast array of sophisticated craft beer, cider and artisanal cocktails. Exacerbating this challenge is the absence of the wine bars and wine flights once offered to encourage trial. Today one is more likely to encounter beer and spirit flights than wine flights on-premise.
Next: What the Wine Industry Must Do To Reverse its Overall Losses, Starting with the On-Premise
