What young wine drinkers want

What pairs well with a cost of living crisis? It looks like the UK is going with the non-alcoholic option. The latest report from the distributor Liberty Wines announced that, by volume, wine sales at restaurants, hotels, pubs and bars are down 19 per cent since 2019. No surprise there, not least due to the series of massive setbacks the industry has faced over the past five years, from a pandemic to nail-biting duty rises. But attitudes towards drinking have changed too, especially among the younger generations.

I should know. As a wine professional, I’ve seen how much drinking has changed among my millennial and Gen Z peers. For a time, getting blackout drunk at least two nights a week (while jibing at our sober friends about their lack of participation) seemed an inexorable fixture of our social calendars. But young people are increasingly recognising this old way of drinking for what it quite often was: an insidious coping mechanism, thinly veiled as a good time.

Placing the future of the industry in the shaky hands of this generation’s drinking habits (or lack thereof) is a great source of anxiety for wine professionals. The concern was addressed at a press briefing for wine trade exhibition Vinexpo Paris in 2022, at a presentation entitled “The Battle of the Generations in the UK”. It revealed that, combined, Gen Z and millennials only make up 26 per cent of wine drinkers (they represent around 40 per cent of the total UK population). It was squeaky-bum time for Vinexpo attendees; when we’re dead and buried, who will be around to buy all the claret?

But here’s the thing. While young people might be drinking less, they’re certainly spending more. Gen Z and millennials make up 34 per cent of total spend off-premises (wine drunk at home, that is) and about 50 per cent of total on-premise spend (wine drunk at restaurants and wine bars). They are also “happy to spend more on a bottle of wine than Boomers”, noted Wine Intelligence COO Richard Halstead.

I’ve seen at the tasting events I run how millennials and Gen Z-ers are more than happy to splash out on a £25 bottle at a wine shop, behaviour some trace to changing consumer patterns during the Covid-19 lockdowns. “People would come in and say, ‘I have nothing else to spend my money on’,” recalls Oliver Dibben, who worked at the north London wine shop Gnarly Vines during the pandemic. “But the interesting thing was, where people were spending £10 on a bottle before Covid and £25 during, the same people didn’t go back to £10 once lockdown lifted. They saw what kind of quality and variety they could get at that price point, and then they never went back. They wanted to know about exactly who was making their wine.”

This trend has continued beyond the boutique bottle shops. Freddy Bulmer, wine buyer at The Wine Society, told me that, “they like to feel they’re buying more than just a bottle of liquid: they want to know about a producer, where the wine comes from and what makes it special. There’s also a real millennial desire for traceability, people want to know where their food and drink comes from, and they’re willing to pay more because they deem it to be better quality.” For example, Gen Z got to know Patrick Bouju — a small boutique producer based in the Auvergne — through the viral TV docu-series Fuck, That’s Delicious, presented by the American rapper/chef/wrestler Action Bronson. Appetite for the rural but energetic wines he produced exceeded the supply. Drinkers connected with Bouju’s messy kitchen, his at-the-table assemblage, his intimate, dimly lit cellar. Now, on most online retailers, the wines are labelled as “Patrick Bouju”, rather than Domaine La Bohème, his business.

It’s not necessarily that young people are going out with the goal of spending more on wine, it’s that the wine they want to drink often costs more. “I don’t treat wine as a throwaway thing any more,” says Ebony Trott, a 26-year-old who works in influencer marketing (and is a familiar face at my tastings). “I like to enjoy what I’m drinking, and if that happens to be a £30 bottle of Riesling, then that’s what it is.”

“To a degree, the younger generations feel a bit disenchanted with cheaper wine because the industry has had a bit of a race to the bottom for a long time,” says Bulmer. “And the ultimate sacrifice due to that has been quality. Older generations have been concerned with price per bottle being low . . . [but] millennials and Gen Z have grown up to be a bit sceptical of things being under a certain price, they know good quality below a certain price point is very hard to achieve.”

So will we be seeing more retailers replacing the classic regions with the more off-the-wall styles favoured by a younger market? It would mean stocking more chillable reds such as Austrian zweigelt and youthful Beaujolais, perhaps a single-vineyard Riesling or a low-intervention burgundy — and, of course, that trendiest of styles: orange wine.

The Wine Society now lists Astro Bunny — a £26 Australian pink fizz made in the trendy pét-nat style. “I don’t buy it because it’s cool, I bought it because it’s the most consistently good pét-nat I’ve ever tasted,” says Bulmer. “As a buyer, I want to respond to a market where young drinkers are much more adventurous, but they still want to drink bordeaux, still want to drink the Italian classics — they just want the best examples of them, with that story behind every bottle.”

A lot of people working in the industry call this trend “drinking less but drinking better”, but I think there’s something deeper at play here — a phenomenon I’m attempting to coin as “gastronomic absurdism”. Right now, for many younger people, it doesn’t feel like there is much of a future to save for, even for middle-income millennials and certainly not for Gen Z, many of whom feel they’ve been glued to the starting block.

Many young professionals have resigned themselves to the idea they’ll likely rent property for their whole lives, so why not spend what spare money they have on what makes them feel good now? Everyone needs a hobby, and for many of those living in big cities that hobby has become food and wine. “Sure, saving £100 on wine a month might save me £1,200 a year, but that’s a drop in the ocean compared with what I’d need for a house deposit,” says Billy Ford, a 29-year-old data scientist and wine hobbyist. “I’m always happy to sacrifice my savings to get more enjoyment out of life.”

What wine represents for young people has shifted dramatically. For many, it has moved from something necked fast to get drunk to an emblem of thoughtful consumption — an expensive habit that can be displayed on social media in lieu of a house or car. It’s also probably no coincidence that when I posted a call-out on social media asking for my young followers’ favourite wines, all of them were ready-to-drink and no more than a few years old. These are wines sold with the intention of consumption in the next few years, designed to be enjoyed in the current moment. Why buy en primeur when the world is burning?

Hannah Crosbie is a wine writer and broadcaster from Edinburgh. Jancis Robinson is away

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