I’ve been peering into my crystal glass to see where the wine world is going in 2026, but the future is cloudy right now. For example, will the US Supreme Court rule against US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, so wine prices don’t go up even more? We’ll have to wait and see.
On the other hand, I’m confident climate change will affect grape growing for the foreseeable future. The UK’s Met Office predicts 2026 will be among the top four warmest years ever recorded, which means more floods, storms, heat waves, drought and wildfires in historic regions in 2026, causing winemakers to plant more vines in cooler climes such as in Sweden.
Some trends from this past year are still evolving. Non-alcoholic wines will go even more mainstream, with bigger selections in restaurants and even better-tasting examples as technology improves. Five large French companies are on the case, with giant Castel announcing an investment of €10 million (R194 million) in a no-alcohol production facility in the Loire Valley.
White wines will keep outpacing reds; winegrowers in Sancerre even opened a new office in Bangkok in December. Wineries’ embrace of eco-ethics translates into expanding investment in regenerative farming, and the wine and health controversy and whether bottles should carry a cancer warning continues.
Sales of wine may be down, but I’m more optimistic than my colleagues and reject a doom-and-gloom narrative.
New data from the 2025 US Wine Consumer Benchmark Segmentation Study found Generation Z (born 1997 to 2012) has upped consumption over the past year, much in line with previous generations when they came of age, and millennials (1981 to 1996) have overtaken boomers to become the biggest wine-drinking cohort.
Wine bars and natural wine fairs are packed with those consumers.
Vino is now part of pop culture and the sports world (check out Kendall-Jackson’s new NBA-label wines), as well as a main character in films such as the Netflix romcom Champagne Problems. Season two of hit wine series Drops of God will drop on Apple TV on 21 January.
And as old ideas of fine wine rapidly shift, “make wine fun again” is the new zeitgeist.
Here’s what else I see in my glass …
You’ll be drinking more sparkling wine, from surprising places
Champagne sales are slumping, but fizz broadly has been less affected than the downturn affecting still wine in the US, the UK and France, where prosecco sales grew 12% last year.
It turns out that millennials and Gen Z indulge in sparkling wine much more than boomers do.
This is according to a survey of almost 5 000 US adults released in early December by the Wine Market Council, a US market research company.
Why? Bubbly is now a lifestyle wine for every day, like rosé, something to sip with takeout Thai or Chinese. Not to mention that in a flute, fizz is wonderfully Instagrammable.
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