By Eimear Corcoran
Ironically, the generation that turned sobriety into a personality trait might just be the one to bring wine back. We’ve been told Gen Z doesn’t drink. They’re damp, they’re dry, they’re “sober curious,” and they’d rather spend their Friday night at Pilates and a matcha café than anywhere near a wine list. And, there’s plenty of data to back that up. Survey after survey has shown younger people cutting back on alcohol, often because they’re thinking more about their mental and physical health.
But the story around Gen Z wine is starting to shift. Recent reporting from IWSR (International Wine and Spirits Record) found that Gen Z alcohol abstinence has actually dropped noticeably year-over-year in markets like Italy and the UK. That doesn’t mean they’re suddenly going wild at the bar. Moderation is still very much a thing. Fewer drinks. Fewer nights out. More thinking about what, when, and why they’re drinking.
In other words, the wellness movement isn’t going anywhere. But the idea that Gen Z is either completely sober or completely uninterested in alcohol? That part might be cracking. And that crack could be exactly where wine needs to show up.
So, Does Gen Z Actually Hate Wine?
The question is, how does an industry with a reputation for being a little stuck-up, a little entitled, and very much “let me tell you about the terroir” actually get through that door? Two recent episodes of the Masterclass US Wine Market basically give us a pretty good roadmap. And, interestingly, neither one says wine needs to become more complicated. Quite the opposite.
It needs to stop explaining itself so much and start selling a feeling. In Episode 2742, Barbara Fitzgerald sits down with Molly Bossardt of Bread & Butter Digital Marketing. Bossardt opens with a line that should probably be printed out and stuck on every winery’s marketing wall: “Wine doesn’t have a consumer problem, it has a positioning problem.” It’s hard to argue with that.
Wine, We Need to Talk About Your Image…
The wine industry spends an enormous amount of time talking about the wine itself. The grapes. The region. The winemaking process. The awards. The pedigree. The terroir. All important, but at some point, you have to actually make someone want the bottle.
Bossardt’s answer is to stop leading with education and start leading with occasion. Specialty coffee is probably the easiest comparison. Most coffee brands aren’t trying to teach you about roast profiles every time you order a latte, yet they’ve created a whole culture around the experience of drinking coffee. It’s a morning ritual, a meeting, a treat. It’s part of someone’s identity. Wine could do that too.
Wine has a habit of making every bottle feel like a quiz. And that same problem shows up in the way wine clubs are structured. The traditional wine club, Bossardt points out, can feel like a very boomer version of loyalty: sign up, get your shipments, get your discount, stay subscribed. Gen Z, on the other hand, wants low stake subscriptions. They’re already paying for Netflix, Spotify, Amazon etc. They don’t want to be locked into something they don’t understand or can’t easily get out of. So the opportunity isn’t necessarily to get rid of wine clubs. It’s to rethink them.
Perfect is Out and Personality is In!
That last part matters more than wine brands might think, and that’s authenticity. This is where Laura Gabriel comes in. In Episode 2711, Gabriel, founder of Gabriel & Company and co-founder of Paper Planes Wine Company and The River Club in Napa Valley, gets into what younger consumers actually respond to. Her point is simple: younger drinkers aren’t buying polished brands anymore. They’re buying the story. A smaller producer with a strong personality and something real to say can be much more interesting than a perfectly polished corporate wine brand. Gen Z can spot something that feels manufactured from a mile away, and they’re not exactly rushing to hand over their money for it. They want to know what’s behind the bottle. How was the wine made? Is the production sustainable? Is it vegan? Who actually owns the company? What does the brand stand for? Does it feel like there are real people behind it? It’s not just about what’s inside the bottle anymore.
Gabriel also talks about making Napa feel more approachable to younger audiences, which means being creative, being different, and, maybe most importantly, actually showing up where younger consumers are, meaning TikTok. If you want to talk to people under 30, you probably can’t just expect them to magically wander into your tasting room because you have a beautiful website and a very serious photograph of your vineyard. You have to meet them somewhere.
What I also like about Gabriel’s approach is that she doesn’t make rebranding sound like some mystical creative exercise. She talks about actually asking customers what they think before changing things, like understanding why people respond to a brand and explaining how a wine club works instead of assuming everyone automatically gets it.
Wine’s Superpower Is Bringing People Together
Which brings us back to the wellness thing because there’s another reason wine might have an opening with this generation, and it has less to do with drinking and more to do with connection. Dinner parties are having a bit of a moment again. After years of solo self-care, wellness routines, screens, dating apps, remote work, and generally spending a lot of time alone, people are craving actual, in-person connection again and wine can be part of that. Not because everyone suddenly wants to drink more, but because a bottle on the table can help create a reason to sit down, slow down, and spend a few hours with other people.
That’s a very different proposition from “wine is better because this vineyard is 400 years old.” Put Bossardt’s positioning argument next to Gabriel’s focus on authenticity, and the takeaway is pretty straightforward. Wine needs to feel less like a lecture and more like an invitation. Less “Here’s why this Cabernet deserves your respect.” More “hey, we’re having people over Friday. Bring a bottle.”
Gen Z isn’t necessarily rejecting wine. They might just be rejecting the version of wine that has been presented to them and that distinction matters.
They’re one of the most online generations we’ve ever marketed to, but they’re also incredibly hungry for real connection. If the wellness movement is starting to move away from the idea that everything has to be all-or-nothing, wine has an interesting opportunity, not to position itself as the opposite of wellness but as part of the social side of it. The bottle that turns a random Tuesday into dinner with friends. The glass that gets poured while everyone is cooking. The excuse to invite people over. That’s probably a much more interesting future for wine and it sounds a lot more fun too.
Want to go deeper?
Both conversations are well worth a listen:
- Episode 2742: Barbara Fitzgerald and Molly Bossardt talk positioning, occasion-based marketing, and what wine can learn from the world of coffee.
- Episode 2711: Juliana Colangelo and Laura Gabriel get into brand therapy, authenticity, and building wine projects that younger consumers actually want to be part of.
- You might also like: Wine: Just for Boomers or Stuck in the Wrong Narrative? — because maybe wine’s problem isn’t the people drinking it. Maybe it’s the way we keep talking about it.
By Eimear Corcoran, Digital Marketing & Communications specialist for Mamma Jumbo Shrimp
