Though other recent reports have bemoaned the fact that millennials (ages 27 to 42 in 2023) are not adopting wine at the same rate as other generations, now that the majority are in their 30s, that trend is reversing.
In fact, not only are 30-something millennials consuming more wine, but high-end millennial consumers spend more per bottle on average than baby boomers. At a recent conference, Wine Market Council (WMC) director of research Christian Miller commented on these findings.
“Despite all of the concerns in the press, this study shows that the millennial generation has not underperformed in terms of their population as wine drinkers across time,” said Christian Miller.
Calculating generational wine consumption
The study, entitled the U.S. Wine Consumer Benchmark Segmentation Survey, has been conducted by WMC every one to two years since 1997, and is considered to be the longest running survey of the American wine consumer, with 18 studies completed to date.
The 2023 study included a representative sample of 4,470 legal-drinking age Americans, of which 1,584 were wine consumers. As President of Wine Market Council, I was involved in helping to analyze the results, but the survey was outsourced to research provider Caravan OmniBus.
Millennials pull ahead of Gen X and Gen Z wine consumers
As part of this year’s WMC study, Miller conducted a longitudinal analysis comparing the average wine consumption rates of Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z consumers as they reached legal drinking age of 21 years.
Millennials have pulled ahead of the pack at 36% average consumption in 2023. The graph also shows the “Covid Hangover,” resulting, in part, from some Americans starting to drink less alcohol in general as an aftermath of increased consumption during the depths of the pandemic, in addition to other reasons.
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