The Wine-Searcher's US editor gets the latest from the Wine Market Council conference in Napa.
Why don't you pour a glass of wine, relax, and join me for a relaxing story about how wine isn't selling.
The Wine Market Council held a conference in Napa on Wednesday to deliver more bad news to the industry, this time sliced and diced by age group, race and gender. It won't be news to most readers that 2023 was a dreadful year for wine sales, with a 9 percent drop in shipments from producers to distributors. It was a bad enough year that conferences like this one now focus on finding a few bright spots among the rubble.
The most interesting, at least to me, was that the purpose of wine has changed. You know how food magazines are always saying wine is meant to go with food? That's very 20th century.
When asked why they drink wine, the largest group of consumers (47 percent) chose "It makes me feel more relaxed, laid back." This easily beats the 35 percent who said they like it because it tastes better than other alcoholic products.
Now, to be fair, wine did reasonably well on questions about whether or not it goes with dinner – but not as well as you might expect. A large majority of drinkers said wine is appropriate with "dinner at a formal/fancy restaurant."
But for weekday dinners at home, only 45 percent of wine drinkers – wine drinkers! – chose wine as their beverage of choice. Just 17 percent chose beer; the amorphous category "other" (including ready-to-drink cocktails, the hottest category of booze in the US) was favored by 30 percent.
Wine Market Council gets its data from a survey of 4470 consumers that is weighted by age, gender, race and area of residence to match that of the US as a whole. It includes non-wine-drinkers because only 34 percent of American adults drink wine – down from a peak of 42 percent in 2012. The report always leads to a variety of interesting data. Here are some takeaways:
- 55 percent of US wine drinkers are women. Women's share has increased over the years mainly because men, especially younger men, have been drinking less wine since 2015. However, men spend more per bottle on average than women.
- Speaking of which, for all the talk about how cheap wines keep declining in sales, the average price of a bottle of wine sold in the US in 2023 was USD 12.09.
- Wine drinkers tend to be college graduates with higher incomes – but 25 percent of US wine drinkers have not been to college.
- Only 36 percent of wine drinkers have children under 18 at home (perhaps too challenging to balance Chardonnay and play dates?)
- 29 percent of consumers buy wine on their mobile phones now. Hey, I know a great site for that!
- The most popular wine-producing country outside the US is Italy; 36 percent of wine drinkers say they buy Italian wines. Italy is followed by France (28 percent) and Spain (18 percent).
- WMC president Liz Thach called it an "urban legend" that most wine is consumed within 24 hours of purchase. In fact, only 24 percent of wine is drunk on the day, but 59 percent is drunk within 3 days of purchase.
- For all the hand-wringing over millennials, they actually buy more wine at various life stages than all other generations.
- White people account for 66 percent of wine drinkers, down from 72 percent in 2015. This roughly shadows a shift in the total US population. Asian Americans are drinking more wine and now drink roughly the same amount per capita as white people. African Americans have also increased wine consumption, and are nearing parity. It is Hispanics who are not drinking as much wine as other groups. This is bad news because Hispanics are the fastest-growing population group in the US.
- Several people in the audience were, like, totally so sure that legal cannabis is cutting into wine consumption. But WMC research director Christian Miller said that is not true. He said 16 percent of wine drinkers use cannabis, and the use often overlaps.
"I think the cannabis impact is still somewhat theoretical," Miller said, as somewhere near me in the audience the Big Lebowski whispered, "Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion, man." (But actually it's from the survey.)
Wednesday's takeaway
As long as we're talking statistics – which I love – here are a few more presented Wednesday by Danny Brager of Azur Associates:
- Wines above USD 15 were growing in sales until last year. But suddenly in 2023, sales of wine over USD 50 dropped 11.7 percent and sales of wine from USD 25-50 dropped 15.4 percent. Even the safest price category, USD 15 to USD 25, dropped 5 percent.
- The only major varietals to grow in sales last year were Pinot Grigio and white blends. Even Sauvignon Blanc finally started dropping. And rosé, the last Next Big Thing, dropped faster than everything else.
- Champagne sales dropped 16.6 percent while Prosecco sales rose 4 percent.
- But with all of the gloom and doom, many of the big brands are still doing well. Brager said 33 of the top-selling 100 brands saw sales growth in 2023, including half of the top 10 sellers: Josh Cellars, Bota Box, LaMarca, Black Box and Kendall Jackson.
The presentation concluded with a panel on how to attract multicultural consumers to wine. A WMC multicultural study found that young non-white people think wine is "low-energy."
"They thought that wine was boring," said Mike Lakusta, CEO of EthniFacts. He also said many wine-pairing suggestions aren't useful. "There was a food disconnect. Not everybody is interested in duck paté."
Also, wine is "not manly enough."
"Too many men thought wine is just for a girls' night out," Lakusta said.
Dalia Ceja, executive marketing director for Ceja Vineyards, said that it's important to give people recipes they can relate to. Her winery, founded by Mexican-American immigrants who worked their way up from grape pickers to winery owners, frequently posts videos of pairing wine with Mexican foods, including with recipes.
Angela McCrae, publisher of the African American wine site Uncorked & Cultured, said that representation is important to reach the Black community. Black consumers want to see winery representatives who look like them.
McCrae also said the single most provocative thing from the whole 3-hour-plus session, as kind of a side comment. She said that when she started buying wine, she – and her friends as well – looked at the Alcohol by Volume in stores.
"The higher the better," McCrae said.
Personally I have never seen this broached before. Miller has done research showing that most consumers don't care about the alcohol level. There is a small group of consumers (over-represented among wine writers, myself included) who prefer lower alcohol levels. There is also a growing market for reduced-alcohol or no alcohol wines: there was a presentation about this by Heidi Scheid, whose family winery makes Sunny with a Chance of Flowers.
But I had never before heard anyone talk about marketing higher alcohol as a positive.
Maybe they should? I raised the question and after the seminar, several people in the audience came up to me to say that they bought wines that way when they were starting out. Two wine industry people told me their daughters, in their 20s, buy wines that way now.
Maybe this is the way to make wine less boring, and possibly even more manly? I leave it to be sorted out by the folks at Gallo – who now make (according to Brager) both the best-selling wine in the country (Barefoot) AND the best-selling spirit (High Noon). Time for Gallo Super Extra Hearty Burgundy?
Source: Wine-Searcher, W.Blake Gray