Wine's search for new drinkers

I held a tasting for my daughter and her twenty-something friends to see if I could convert the next generation to wine. Plus: what I've been drinking this week

Wine's new generation: my daughters (and friend) bucking the consumption trend by enjoying wine while under 25

I don’t often drink with young people – my loss, I’m sure. But at my 23 year-old daughter Clara’s request, last Saturday I did a tutored wine tasting for her and eight friends. We compared four pairs of wines – Chardonnays (plus a Blanc de Blancs English sparkler from Ridgeview), Sauvignon Blancs, Pinot Noirs and Syrahs, mostly Old versus New World styles. We took a break for baked pasta with peppers in the middle, accompanied by the first of the Pinots. We ate and drank and talked. They were a really nice bunch and everyone seemed to have a lovely time.

Yet we were apparently bucking the trend. Hardly a day goes by without someone in the wine world wringing their hands over young people’s supposed lack of interest in our chosen drink. Wine and people who sell it – or indeed care about it at all – are allegedly fusty and out of touch, driving young drinkers to cocktails or worse (kombucha, say). And this, the wine trade frets, bodes ill for the future of the industry: as one commentator on LinkedIn warned last week, “if the wine industry doesn’t evolve, it risks becoming irrelevant… as people move on to other interests.”

It’s true that wine sales are falling in the UK, US and elsewhere – and not just to young people. Partly, people are just drinking less: a 2023 poll found that nearly a third of Britons aged 18-24 don’t drink alcohol at all, and teetotalism is creeping up in the wider population too. But there is especial concern about young people’s changing tastes. An influential US report published in January last year attracted particular concern for its poll finding that only 16 per cent of drinkers aged 21-34 said wine was the drink they were most likely to take to a party.

This is a common complaint even in France. If I had a euro for every vigneron who has moaned to me that young people these days all drink beer and cocktails instead of wine, I could, well, buy a round of Porn Star Martinis. Never mind that official French statistics suggest that even in 1980, just a quarter of French 20-24 year-olds drank wine regularly.

Maybe Clara’s friends weren’t a representative group: all white, middle-class, recent graduates, starting out on careers in London – and all already wine drinkers to some extent, even though not dedicated or knowledgeable ones. “I think it’s true in general that wine isn’t their main drink of choice,” says Clara. “I wouldn’t usually drink wine when I go out, more likely cocktails.” Yet I was struck by their keenness to learn more about the subject.

They asked sensible questions, even though I wished that most of them hadn’t felt they needed to preface their queries with, “This might be a silly question but…” How many grapes does it take to make a bottle? Are wine grapes the same as the ones you buy in a shop to eat? How are grapes picked? The Old/New World distinction didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to them. And they were very unclear about the use or purpose of oak barrels.

So I needed to explain more than I’d anticipated about grape-growing and winemaking, which reflects my own immersion in the subject: the workings of a winery aren’t obvious to non-specialists. Some wine people – especially ones like me, with a background in newspapers and political communications – worry that we’ll lose people if we give them too much information. US President Ronald Reagan memorably said that “If you're explaining, you're losing” – a quote I’ve always enjoyed brandishing at verbose policy colleagues – but we have to take the time, when people show a readiness to learn more about wine.

In part, that interest may reflect my daughter’s friends’ social background. Whatever the changes in wine’s consumption, it remains, at least in the UK and for the middle classes, a standard part of meals out or more special meals at home. It’s hard to see that changing back to, say, what it was in 1960s Britain, when wine really was more of a luxury.

That is true for some workplaces and work events too: one young guy working in the City said, “Everyone in my team at work are very knowledgeable [about wine] so it’s been something I’ve wanted to learn about for a while.” This is still the social context of wine in Britain, whatever the pressures from abstention and alternative drinks.

They were also interested in climate change and its effects on wine, especially in relation to the changes in English wine. I’d recently spoken to Simon Roberts, winemaker at Ridgeview, and others for a piece on this very subject, so was able to regale them with hair-raising tales of growers staying up half the night running frost fans to protect their vines. “Could you grow grapes under polytunnels to stop frosts?” asked one. Unfortunately, not really.

But I was surprised too at some of the notions – and misinformation – that these young people had picked up. Somebody asked about under-sea maturation, an eye-catching idea but not one practiced by many wine producers – and from the ones I’ve seen, those that do are using it primarily as a marketing tool.

More telling was a question about the significance of “legs” in a glass, the way that drops of wine run back down the inside of a glass. More pronounced legs are associated with higher alcohol levels – they’re clearest in sherry or port – but that’s all: it’s a myth that they have anything to do with quality. So how did that idea percolate through to the mainstream?

It was also clear that natural wines have registered with them – testimony again to some latent level of interest in wine, even in what is supposed to be an unpromising demographic. “What about orange wines?” asked one girl. I got out a bottle of Tblvino’s Qvevris Kisi at this point – but then had more explaining to do. I find natural wines interesting – but the common attitude among their proponents that they’re somehow more democratic than their fusty, conventional counterparts is odd. There’s a lot to explain about why they taste like they do. Still, one wine merchant friend who regularly runs events tells me that at a recent natural wine tasting she arranged for a thirtieth birthday, the orange wines and pét-nats went down a storm.

Of course it isn’t just young people who have a sketchy knowledge of wine – and a desire to learn more about it. Just before Christmas I went to a social event with a friend who works for a big consultancy, organised by a corporate client (I think I was the only guy not in a suit.) Spectator wine critic Jonathan Ray and a buyer from a major importer hosted it. The emphasis was on fun rather than learning, with Ray and his partner making up competing tall stories about a wine and the audience having to guess which wine we were actually sipping. But wine entertainment of this kind somehow always seems to turn into self-depreciation for anyone with knowledge. “You know those tossers on TV swirling and sniffing?” Ray asked us. “I’m going to turn you into those tossers!”

People Clara’s age are indeed a different demographic to that fortysomething corporate crowd. And it’s possible that industry panic over their drinking habits could be a little exaggerated: wine drinkers may naturally be an older demographic. I’ve seen research and heard anecdotal evidence in the US that millennials (those born 1981-96) are now consuming more wine than the previous two generations, despite having seemed less interested while in their 20s and 30s.

Still, the wine trade has its work cut out here. I’m not claiming to have a solution. I’m no marketeer, and while I understand why wine marketing people are scrambling for new ways to talk to young people, jargon such as “embrace the casual cool” tends to bring me out in the kind of rash that phrases like “key learnings” and “onboarding of external resource” did in my old communications day job.

But I don’t think it’s too hard to engage younger drinkers: my weekend guests expressed real pleasure in getting my basic introduction to the subject. It doesn’t have to be complicated: “I was surprised by how much the colours of the wines varied,” commented one. Another said: “I really enjoyed tasting the same grape from a different place and seeing that [the wines] were different.” Yes: I still do. Tasting and making those discoveries is what gave me my first light-bulb wine moment, in Sonoma over 30 years ago. We can light that fire in a new generation of drinkers.

It’s a dog’s life: Lemmy the cockapoo tries to get in on Saturday’s tasting action

What I’ve been drinking this week

Soil Therapy “Rittersberg” 2021, Alsace - Thomas Larmoyer makes tiny quantities of wine from grapes bought from in organic and biodynamic vineyards in top crus across Alsace. This blend of Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris is typically elegant and thought provoking: made from grapes grown on decomposed granite followed by a year in barrique, it’s aromatic, mineral, concentrated and elegant: serious stuff. Not cheap, though this kind of boutique winemaking never is, especially in places like Alsace (Déjà Bu Wines, £52.)

Tanners Côtes du Rhône 2022 - nothing especially spectacular about this red, just a well-made and very enjoyable glass on a chilly evening: warm, spicy, full. Made by Famille Gonnet from majority Grenache; despite the hot vintage, they managed to keep the alcohol down to 13.5% (Tanners, £13.50.)

The Society’s 150th Anniversary Chianti Classico 2015 - a stunning Chianti in the remarkable series of wines produced to celebrate the Wine Society’s 150th birthday last year. Made for them by highly respected producer Fontodi from high, organically farmed vines, this brims with sweet fruit but it’s beautifully balanced and long too. A bargain at the price, for this sort of quality (The Wine Society, £27.)

• Transparency declaration: the Tanners wine was a free sample, and I tasted the Larmoyer at a press tasting as his guest.