In northern Iowa, the morning sun lights up a vineyard surrounded by corn fields. The grape harvest is well underway with a machine pulled by a small tractor.
Anne Zwink sips on coffee as she watches the harvester comb trellises, shaking grapes loose from the vine. Zwink is Soldier Creek Winery’s award-winning winemaker and president of the Iowa Wine Growers Association.
“We’re actually harvesting four varieties today because everything became ripe all at once last week in the heat,” she said.
The machine tips 600 pounds of La Crescent, a cold-hardy and disease-resistant grape, into a large bin. The harvest has been lower than average this year, Zwink says. The vines are still recovering from a four-year drought, and a few acres were damaged by herbicide drift from nearby fields.
But Zwink says the biggest challenge for her family’s winery and others across the state are sales.
“We have a really hard cash flow problem right now where we have a lot of money in the tanks, and it’s hard to actually sell the product that’s in the tank,” Zwink said.
Globally, wine consumption has trended down since 2018. In the U.S., volumes fell by 15% between 2019 and 2024. The largest losses were in Florida, New York and California, where many consumers switched to spirits and ready-to-drink beverages, like canned cocktails and hard seltzers.
But the number of American adults who report drinking alcohol has also dropped to 54%, according to a recent Gallup poll — marking an all-time low since the initial poll in 1939. And those who drink say they’re consuming less alcohol.
Health concerns are the biggest driver behind the behavior shift. The rate of participants who said “one or two drinks a day” negatively affects health increased from 26% in 2016 to 53% in 2025. This view was held highest by 18-35 year-olds.
In response to suppressed demand and canceled contracts with large winemakers, some grape growers in California and Washington have pulled out their least productive vineyards.
Randall Vos, commercial fruit crops field specialist for Iowa State University Extension, said Iowa also faces a greater supply of grapes than demand.
“It’s a challenge,” Vos said. “Do you ride it out and hopefully in a couple years it’ll be better, or do you pull out that vineyard? That’s a long term decision.”
Some Iowa wineries have closed in recent years.
But not every region of the American Heartland is experiencing the same effects. Kentucky, Tennessee and North Dakota saw significant increases in per capita wine consumption between 2019 and 2024.
And wineries in areas with large tourism economies seem to be buffered from the national consumer trends.
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