The losses keep stacking up for the U.S. wine industry.
Wine sales in the U.S. last year tumbled approximately 6% from 2023, according to data from the industry data group SipSource. The drop is the latest in a long-term decline in wine demand in restaurants, bars and stores that some are calling an “existential threat” to the industry.
Wine isn’t the only alcoholic drink that’s fallen on hard times; data from NIQ shows sales for beer, cider and spirits have also decreased. But wine’s fall is steeper, and the whole industry is aware of the shift.
“Wines have been surging, surging, surging all these years, but the last few years they have dropped off,” said Larry Duke, who has owned and operated Schumer’s Wine and Liquor in Manhattan since 1978.
The wine industry got a boost in 2020 when Covid-fueled lockdowns and stay-at-home orders juiced demand. But that spike has proved to be fleeting.
Wine industry scholar Mike Veseth, author of several books and The Wine Economist newsletter, pointed to generational trends to explain the drop in wine consumption.
“The baby boom generation embraced wine,” Veseth said. “We imagined that the generations that followed would keep doing that, but they haven’t.”
A 2023 Gallup poll backed up that theory, showing that younger Americans drank less than previous generations.
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