Said Jon Phillips, a Sonoma County wine manufacturer, quoted in "California winery owner gives hottest take yet on why industry is dying" (NY Post).
Why wouldn't the next generation step up as consumers of wine?“[Boomers] were the people that were really responsible for joining wine clubs and Gen X that came after Boomers just weren’t really into wine to the same level that the Boomers were into wine,” [Phillips] said.
Gen X never wants to do anything. Phillips is waiting for Millennials and Gen Zs to mature into the wine-drinking way of life. I guess I should hope he's disappointed.
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74 comments:
"It’s not because the Boomers are drinking less, it’s because there are less Boomers."
"Good. MORE FOR ME." - Mrs. Clinton
"Less boomers?" How about "fewer" for God's sake?
I (Boomer) drink wine most every night. When I'm with the younger generation I see them with Hard Seltzers and Hard Ciders. Not cocktails, not wine, not beer. Jesus drank wine. Or at a minimum, he made it. The bible celebrates wine. Good enough for me.
“Phillips is waiting for Millennials and Gen Zs to mature into the wine-drinking way of life. I guess I should hope he's disappointed.”
I hope his disappointment doesn’t drive him to drink.
Boomers drinking less wine? Yes, fewer Boomers. And, they don't serve wine in the Dementia Ward, but you can sneak a few gummies in.
It’s not because the Boomers are drinking less, it’s because there are less Boomers.
Not long ago I was on the same stage as Rachel Maddow, both of us able to look out at her audience. I saw what she saw.
They used to call Florida "Gods waiting room."
It now applies even more to the MS NOW audience.
Naw Weed is legal most places now. A lot of people use that and not booze.
Gen X never wanted to do BOOMER THINGS. The Boomers never ever listened to Gen X once...
That's been the issue ever since the Boomers demanded to keep The Beatles and Rolling Stones on the radio long past their sell-by date...and then demanded to listen to hair metal...
Two points
California wines give me headaches and European wines do not.
Boomers aborted over 10 million Gen X from R v W and 1980. That’s is a lot of wine not consumed. Second and third order effects have an impact.
Usually when we have an overproduction situation the supply-demand curve will adjust prices to clear inventory, but wine prices have stayed stubbornly high. The marginal cost difference between growing an Opus 1 and a bottle of Josh is very little, yet "premium" wines have stayed at the stratospheric highs enjoyed in early oughts.
That was my experience so I checked it against an industry source ("Trading Grapes") and they said: ... data indicates that as of late 2025, the market is undergoing a "premiumization" shift where, despite dropping overall sales volume, the price of high-end, rare, and specific, sought-after, labels remains high or is, rising, even as the broader, fine-wine, market, stabilizes.
Insert Spinal Tap joke here.
It may not help that alcohol is recognized as a straight poison and that it causes brain degeneration at any level of use.
“ data indicates that as of late 2025, the market is undergoing a "premiumization" shift”
You don’t maintain a premium shift if you don’t cultivate people into a product at a widespread and economical scale. Your premium crowd eventually dies out.
Harley-Davidson is in the same doom loop.
Tosa, have you ever been diagnosed with a sensitivity to sulphur or sulphites? That might be an ingredient difference in the two regions you noted. (OTOH I am just dashing this off quickly without checking.)
@Mike (MJB Wolf): Premiumization was the Swiss luxury watch strategy during the COVID era. A short-term bubble by bunch of locked-down buyers was followed by a prolonged crash. The Subdial index shows only 24 months. If they showed 60 months the horror show would be obvious.
https://subdial.com/market
Way back when, the French turned their overproduced cheap wines into industrial alcohol/fuel. When life gives you grapes, you make grape-ade.
My hunch is the "premium" crowd is the only market that stayed strong, you know all Gavin's friends in Silicon Valley etc. It's regular folk that went away from wine drinking coupled with youngin's opting not to drink that shrank the non-premium market.
So my question is why don't those producers left at the mid-level drop pricing to beat the Franzettas and Barefoots of the world at their price point? It's what a mature market does to meet the target.
Nice contributions, Enigma!
Technology has played a big part here, too. The advent of wine-making technology, the advance of of wine science, and the ability to control several key quality-related parameters has allowed modern industrial technology to make really tasty wines, in volume, consistently. An industry has been created, and if you like wine, there has been no better time in history to enjoy it. It's too bad the capacity has peaked at the same time the client population has started its decline. They should be marketing better.
From 2009 to 2022 I ran a company supplying high-end tools to vineyards and orchards (and landscapers) and spent an inordinate amount of time on all the wine estates of CA-OR-WA. Being in the field was the best part of the job.
Older Boomer prices wanting young Boomer habits
Younger folks dont use Facebook nearly as much either
@TosaGuy and @Mike (MJB Wolf) regarding wine sensitivity and sulfites.
Sulfites MAY be an issue, but grapes in general have lots of tannins and tannins can cause migraines. I suspect that some types are worse than others. Still, (red) wine headaches are widely discussed.
As my boss long ago once said: "When I drink wine in a bar, I'll either fight or f*ck that evening."
Also wine is the Tulips craze of the late 1900s and early 2000s. It's fine. But there are other good things to drink too. And millenials have been exposed to functional alcoholic wine obsessed their whole lives. Like my teenage kids and how they feel about Disney adults.
I
I am younger GenX and my peers in SoCal were definitely wine obsessed. So I suspect it was always just a numbers issue
That was my experience so I checked it against an industry source ("Trading Grapes") and they said: ... data indicates that as of late 2025, the market is undergoing a "premiumization" shift where, despite dropping overall sales volume, the price of high-end, rare, and specific, sought-after, labels remains high or is, rising, even as the broader, fine-wine, market, stabilizes.
------------------
I was on allocation for Quilceda Creek wine. They usually gave you one notification of availability. If you snoozed you loosed.
I stopped buying a couple of years ago due to price. Within the last year I've received two follow up notices that I still had a chance to order. So yeah, demand is softening.
I'm allergic to sulfites (and probably tannins) but I've never had much taste for wine anyway so don't feel I've missed out. It seems to be true that European wine consumed there--with good food--affects me less that way than what I have learned to avoid here.
As for the disappearing Boomer, you ain't seen nothing yet. Our demographic dominance will vanish as quickly as it came.
"R C Belaire said...
"Less boomers?" How about "fewer" for God's sake?"
The repetition of less, while grammatically incorrect, is still a better turn of phrase. It is a small triumph of art over form.
"Okay Boomer," is an insult. To some degree the fact that boomers enjoy wine in and of itself makes it less enticing to Gen Z. I will also note for the context of the saying, "Okay Boomer," Boomer also includes basically every member of Gen X, and the Millennials. Personally, I don't drink wine anymore or any alcohol for that matter. But I still keep wine stocked so I can use it for cooking and to be able to offer to guests.
I'm a boomer, and I'm drinking a lot less, but I'm not happy about it.
Gen X-ers grew up with wine in the form of "wine coolers," horrible-tasting bottled drinks that combined cheap wine with flavorings and sugar. Then the manufacturers realized that they didn't even need to put wine in their products, so they switched to cheaper grain alcohol. Eventually, that morphed into the "hard seltzers" that the kids like today -- flavored fizzy water with a neutral-tasting alcohol boost. They're light and easy to drink, relatively low in calories, taste like fruit-flavored nothing, and get you just as buzzed if that's what you're looking for. Actual wine, by contrast, has a lot of flavor, tastes terrible when you first try it, and is relatively expensive (especially if you don't know what you're looking for). It's no wonder Millennials and Gen Z aren't all that interested.
Why Boomers? Was it the top drawer prestige of Orson Welles and Paul Masson, or the low-rent funkiness of Boone's Farm and Annie Green Springs?
https://expertbrewing.com/popular-wines-of-the-70s-cold-ducks-blue-nuns-and-mateus-fun/
Didn't GenX have a cocktails and hard liquor, Rat Pack imitative phase? What happened to that? Maybe it wasn't serious.
California vs. France is passé. What about the "Global South"? South Africa, South America, Australia?
My Gen X wife is doing her part. I'm helping the bourbon and Irish whiskey makers, but only on days not followed by work. The bourbon/whiskey makers have their own diminishing audience. Some bottles are coveted and hard to find -- every market creates its own scarcity and tries to create FOMO.
“That's been the issue ever since the Boomers demanded to keep The Beatles and Rolling Stones on the radio long past their sell-by date...and then demanded to listen to hair metal...”
Blasphemy! Good music never gets old, it’s always worth a listen.
Death to hair metal and hair to death metal. I have a friend whose son is the lead guitarist in a band named Carnifex. I once tried listening to their music and within 30 seconds was searching for a wobbly stool and a rope.
I'm drinking less but better whisky.
Iman LOL. My friends just released a single and it sounds like a 70s funk groove. It's on Apple and Spotify under Aisle 14 "Island Jam" just 4 young guys making good original music.
Well...having spent a chunk of my life in the food and wine industries, I can say that I'm still doing my part to prop up the California wine industry. Though...I will note some of the self-inflicted wounds that California has done to its glorious wine producing ability.
First let me say that at my age, I do not, cannot, and don't want to consume alcohol as I did, and as many of us did as younger people in our professional lives. So, the reality of life has cut down on Boomer consumption.
I do note that the Yoots around me tend to drink more foo-foo drinks than I ever did in my Masculine Youth. Even the women drank more masculine drinks back then. We drank whiskey or beer, or cocktails that didn't hide the whiskey or gin. Today the Yoots seem to drink things that make it taste like candy. So be it. But it makes it hard to develop a tongue for quality products, such as fine wines, or fine anything, when your tongue is coated with simple syrup or artificial flavoring.
As for wine- wine is food. It is an agricultural product to be best enjoyed paired with foods. And, in all my days, all my years, I've never met people drinking wine together who didn't feel happy at their engagement with the group. Wine makes people happy. It's been doing that since the early days of civilization. It's a different effect than that of beer or whiskey or vodka or candy-flavored concoctions.
As to California's problem- it is a combination of Ego + Tech Money. The wineries were producing world class wines. The land- in both Napa and Sonoma (as well as other parts of the state and certainly the West Coast) is fertile, with multiple microclimates offering heat, cool, dry, wet, sunny, regions. In short- you could almost not produce anything but good wine if you knew any wine or soil science. And the winemakers were selling a lot and getting awards and acclaim. And so...they began to think a lot of themselves. And they got a bit greedy.
So...there is a glut of good wine. AND, that got paired with seemingly the entire tech industry coming to Napa and Sonoma counties to buy up land, open more wineries, buy housing, and of course, pay anything for any bottle of wine. Which, like the housing markets in San Francisco, Seattle, Palo Alto, San Jose and surrounding cities, means the prices for wine blew way past their actual value into the stratosphere.
So...now you have too much supply of very good wine, with a market price set at 2-3 times what it should be. And...the Yoots used to drinking a cocktail that tastes like Lavender are simply not even going to consider buying a Napa Valley Cabernet for $325/bottle (that's not one-off high end Cab anymore, by the way).
Napa and Sonoma have a serious problem. Too many wineries and too many vineyards producing too much good wine at too high a price. I'm optimistically waiting for the prices to drop.
I can say, it was much more fun in the early days when Napa and Sonoma were just coming into their own and you could just pull up to a small winery off the Silverado Trail and go in to taste some world class wines for a couple of bucks.
My employees took 10 of us out for dinner last night at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Paris Casino, Las Vegas, one of the most expensive restaurants in town. For the cost of one glass of wine, I can get 2 boxes, equal to 8 bottles. One of the caviars was $290 for 1 ounce. A small steak with a small side is over $100. Everything is separate, and nothing is included. I got one of the cheaper entrees, swordfish with no side - $50. I got home, got sick and threw up in the middle of night. I didn't pay, so I don't know what the bill was, but definitely 4 figures. Great location and view. The place was packed. I do not understand the whole concept of expensive restaurants, which almost always give you less food for many times the price, and it's not really quality. It's implied quality.
"I guess I should hope he's disappointed."
Why, exactly? Are you becoming a killjoy in your old age?
Ed Driscoll over at Instapundit referenced this as well, and included quotes from a Jeremy Clarkson column that shows it ain't just happening the US.
Clarkson's explanation is similar to what a number of folks here have referenced. It's a lot cheaper to get buzzed on weed or flavored malt liquor than traditional alcoholic beverages sold at premium prices.
Why wouldn't the next generation step up as consumers of wine?
Step up? Surely you meant step down.
This type of restaurant seems to miss the point of dining the way I imagine it. I expect to be offered items in a way and at a quantities that entice sharing, interaction with food, and not having to decide every item as a separate expense. It kind of ruins the experience of dining, especially in a group, and I'm just not impressed with the concept of fancy for it's own sake. I'm not made for the rich life.
There's a very simple reason why alcohol sales are falling: In the age of smart phones and social media, social lubricants are unnecessary. You don't need a drink to get the courage to talk to a girl. In this era, you don't even need a real girl. Add Covid to it all, and nobody is drinking alcohol except people over 40 who came of drinking age in the early 2000s when it was still a big deal.
The expression "OK, Boomer" -- when applied to Gen X -- is a double insult. First, the true 1945 to 1964 Boomer generation ignored or squashed everything that interested Gen X. Then, later sarcastic youth lumped innocent Gen X in with the Boomers.
Gen X got saddled with "Zima" -- lemon-lime alcoholic soda in a Roman column glass bottle that was better than the contents.
Gen X must be held responsible for popularizing Corona beer. Young Southern California partying tourists to Tijuana and Ensenada Mexico brought back "a cheap and easy to drink" beer suited for teenage tongues. That's the worst thing done by Gen X. Mainstreaming Corona beer.
It's also happening in the bourbon and brown spirits world. Jim Beam just closed one of its distilleries. It's got to work off inventory.
Key Findings on Alcohol and Baby Boomers
Increased Mortality: Between 1999 and 2017, adults aged 45 to 74 (which includes Baby Boomers) consistently had the highest alcohol-related death rates.
"Surge" in Deaths: Research has shown a "surge" in deaths due to a lifetime of alcohol abuse among this generation.
Rapidly Growing Problem: The number of drinkers aged 65 and older increased by 80% between 2002 and 2019, driven by the aging baby boomer population.
Kids these days...
Phillips is waiting for Millennials and Gen Zs to mature into the wine-drinking way of life. I guess I should hope he's disappointed.
What a scold you are.
It's also happening in the bourbon and brown spirits world. Jim Beam just closed one of its distilleries. It's got to work off inventory.
I hope MacAllan has the same problem with its 18 year old single malt, which I can no longer afford. I'm barely able to justify the price of the 15 year stuff.
Key Findings on Alcohol and Baby Boomers
Increased Mortality: Between 1999 and 2017, adults aged 45 to 74 (which includes Baby Boomers) consistently had the highest alcohol-related death rates.
"Surge" in Deaths: Research has shown a "surge" in deaths due to a lifetime of alcohol abuse among this generation.
Rapidly Growing Problem: The number of drinkers aged 65 and older increased by 80% between 2002 and 2019, driven by the aging baby boomer population.
Source for this info? It looks like statistical manipulation. Did the number of alcohol-related deaths increase in proportion to the number of people reaching those ages, or did this cohort have a higher incidence as a percentage than the older cohort?
it was much more fun in the early days when Napa and Sonoma were just coming into their own and you could just pull up to a small winery off the Silverado Trail and go in to taste some world class wines for a couple of bucks.
Back in the 90's quite a few of them were free. I think the first time I visited there, we visited 8 or 10 wineries in a long weekend, and the only ones that charged a fee for a tasting were Joseph Phelps, which was worth it, and Whitehall Lane, which decidedly was not, and their barmen were surly and snooty to boot.
@Iman Blasphemy! Good music never gets old, it’s always worth a listen.
You are inadvertently illustrating my point. Boomers kept The Beatles and Stones and Led Zeppelin (legitimately great bands) around even as numerous younger bands matured.
The corporatization of music happened when Boston, Journey, and similar studio product bands started to be sold as "Music Product." Proven commercial bands with predictable output. Not new, not fresh, not original. Punk was considered a dangerous threat to the business model just a generation after rock went mainstream.
Many of the young upstarts turned out to be far more durable than what got played on the radio in the 1970s and 1980s. This included Punk, New Wave, and "College Rock" (later known as Alternative Rock). Massively influential bands such as New Order, Black Flag, The Clash, The Cure, The Smiths, The Replacements, The Pixies, Metallica, etc. were barely played on anything other than college radio until the very late 1980s.
It wasn't until U2 (1987), REM (1989), Jane's Addiction (1990) and Nirvana (1991) that the Boomer Hair Metal Elevator Muzak Hegemony (now mostly forgotten fluff) went away.
No doubt that I would have accomplished more if I had avoided alcohol my whole life, but some of the best times of my life would not have happened without it. One of the best and worse things about alcohol consumption is that it's hard to be bored when you are drinking. Somehow it makes doing nothing sufficient. That's good when you have nothing to do, but bad when you have something to do.
“You are inadvertently illustrating my point.”
And you are missing mine.
""Less boomers?" How about "fewer" for God's sake?"
This has been covered here. And unless I misremember "less boomers" is acceptable as proper usage in Althouse world.
California vs. France is passé. What about the "Global South"? South Africa, South America, Australia?
Also passé. The cool kids have moved on to wines from exotic places like the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Armenia, which are red hot right now. Mexico is making some good juice in Baja California. Even China is starting to gain some recognition. In the US, there is increasing interest in lesser-known places like Texas, Virginia, and my own home stomping grounds of Arizona. I could drink Arizona wine for the rest of my days and be quite satisfied.
data indicates that as of late 2025, the market is undergoing a "premiumization" shift where, despite dropping overall sales volume, the price of high-end, rare, and specific, sought-after, labels remains high or is, rising, even as the broader, fine-wine, market, stabilizes.
Some of the labels like Screaming Eagle have become Veblen goods. The higher the prices rise, the more people clamor for them.
I used to play that game, but it's been a decade or more since I paid over $100 a bottle. $25 in a liquor store or $50 in a restaurant is enough to basically pick one at random and be pretty sure you'll get a decent drop. I have some old collector's items in my cellar from the 1995-2010 time frame that I really ought to sell as they are not improving now and I will probably never drink them all.
Ever since the state in which I reside legalized gambling, I haven't had the money to spend on beer and wine.
I like alcohol and wine, but as I rarely partake, I’m a sleepy drunk. Add in the sugar crash, and drinking wine just means an early end to a party. When I’m relaxing on a vacation, that may be what I want in the evening. When I’m relaxing with family and friends; I want to experience their company. Neither of my son-in-laws drink any alcohol.
Actually, it's much more akin to the Tulip craze in the 17th Century. Over the last quarter Century I've personally seen thousands of acres of orchard and pasture turned into vineyards, while dozens of wineries have magically appeared.
Booms are always followed by busts. Too much of a product, than a serious decline in market. Usually, when this occurs prices drop but, seemingly all vintners believe
price equals quality so they can never reduce the price.
65 in 2002: Not a boomer. 45 today: Also not a boomer. Drinking is less popular among Millennials and Gen Z, but deaths from drinking can take time, so most of them would be older people in any case. As of 2023, Gen Z had the highest rate of drunk driving deaths and the aged Silent Generation had the lowest. There aren't statistics for deaths from drunken falls in the home, though, which occur most often among the elderly.
I wonder if drunken beer fests are as common among today's college students as they were in past decades. Between all the protests and the diversity, maybe it's not as big a campus activity now?
I stopped trying to keep up with Boomer drinking trends and Boomer music in the mid-70s, and went cold turkey on alcohol on my 30th birthday. Entire generations of youngster music have passed me by, except for occasional dips into MTV back in the heyday; now, I only see new acts by accident.
Pot, and sometimes Hash, were far more enjoyable, and now I loves me some gummie as I continue to explore the wonders and treasures of Europe's musical past.
My wife just informed me that a neighbor has offered us two tickets to the roadshow of "Mamma Mia." My wife's taste overlaps with mine to a degree, but neither of us can stand that crap, so we declined politely.
ABBA. SABATON. SABBATON!
You AI mavens get to work.
Mike at 11:08
+1
There's nothing better than a good glass of wine with an excellent meal. But I've never been into wine clubs or wine tastings. Or touring vinyards.
I just read the Ancient Greeks would dilute their wine with 1 or even 3 parts water to 1 part wine. Drinking wine straight got you labeled as a degenerate drunk.
We taught the twenty somethings in the family about wine and they’re all in, one having a close relationship with the marketing manager at a local vineyard on the rise. They appreciate quality but when the budget pinches they’re good with a craft brew or tito’s cocktail.
Wine and food go together. Well not at breakfast. Anyway its a natural pairing, and that's how I've always drank it. Beer goes well with Hamburgers or maybe some BBQ.
The recent medical guidlines suggesting no more than 1 drink a day and shooting down the idea that "Red wine is good for you" probably has something to do with the decline.
The French are being affected to. The youngsters aren't following the traditional practice of a glass at lunch and dinner "For the digestion". Don't know about Italians.
I just read the Ancient Greeks would dilute their wine with 1 or even 3 parts water to 1 part wine. Drinking wine straight got you labeled as a degenerate drunk.
Wine in those times was also made a lot sweeter than most of our dry wines nowadays, and more like a late-harvest dessert wine.
Narr: "ABBA. SABATON. SABBATON!"
Yes, Sweden's two musical genius groups. Definitely have to do a mashup. Abba already did "Waterloo," so they are hip to the military-history thing. Not sure how well Sabaton would adjust to bubble-gum love stories. Maybe some sort of doomed historical lovers, like Paolo and Francesca? CC, JSM
"Paolo and Francesca?"
Achilles (the Greek hero) and Patroclus.
> Wine and food go together.
> Well not at breakfast
Of course not; breakfast is Guinness Time™!
It would be cool AF if Sabaton did a cover of Boney M’s “Rasputin.” CC, JSM
The two supermarkets we go too, one whole foods the other not, are really pushing the hard liquor. Amount of wine has been cut back. Our local Whole foods has gotten rid of almost all their "Craft Beer" and replaced that with expensive hard liquor - lots of brandy and cognac.
I wonder what effect, if any, these drinkable THC-infused beverages might be having. So far, in my very limited observation, it is people in their 40s buying it.
Part of it maybe just part of a long term trend away from drinking alcohol. In Colonial times, our elites drank truly massive amounts of hard liquor. George Washington was reputedly one of the, if not the, largest alcohol producers in the newly formed USA. But it wasn’t universal. A lot of the Puritans in New England, Baptists in the South, and ultimately Mormons in Utah, Were militant teetotalers. Then, we had the Big Mixing of our WW II military, where the sons of these militant teetotalers shared foxholes with those from more alcohol friendly traditions.
I watched my Greatest Generation parents, and all their close fiends, from teetoling traditions, move from a grudging acceptance of hard liquor parties in the 1950s and 1960s to happy adoption of wine in the 1970s and 1980s. With kids out of the house, what’s the harm of a glass of wine a couple times a week? By my father’s retirement, our worry was that they wouldn’t limit themselves to a single glass of wine Sunday-Thursday. Turns out they did, which was good. And by that point, their church book group always had someone responsible for the wine.
My guess is that the younger generations are just following the long term national trend of consuming less (not “fewer”, since we are talking volume, not counts) alcohol, generation to generation.
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