Today’s tidbits: U.S. wine consumption trends

I’ve uncovered some interesting trend data about U.S. wine consumers that goes back a few years, even a few decades. It seems that right about the time I started drinking wine, everybody else did too. Could Robert Mondavi’s evangelizing of the “world class” aspects of Napa Valley’s bottled goodness have had anything to do with it?

I’ll let you decide as you tiptoe through the following table of telltale tidbits.

Total table wine consumption in the U.S.

• 1995: 164 million cases
• 2004: 243 million cases

Total U.S. adult per capita table wine consumption vs. population growth

• 1970: 134 million adults, 1.05 gallons per adult
• 2004: 209 million adults, 2.77 gallons per adult

Change in frequency of wine consumption, core wine drinkers

• 1994: 3%
• 2005: 30%

Change in frequency of wine consumption, marginal wine drinkers

• 1994: -13%
• 2005: 6%

Net percent drinking more wine by generation:

• Millenials: 39%
• Gen X’ers: 30%
• Boomers: 8%

Golly, these children of the baby boomers, the millenials, could be spending more time drinking and IM’ing each other than they are getting outdoors and hiking the trails. Are they learning that from us boomers?

Now c’mon young ‘uns: I know you’re entrepreneurial, environmentally and socially conscious, technologically savvy and you embrace diversity. And that’s good. But if you really want to keep up with us older folks, you’ll regularly set aside your technoslavery and pay yourself some balance allowance.

After all, you’re practical; I know you believe in that balance. So do we long-in-the-tooth veterans. It’s the pursuit of balance in our lives that’s been keeping us motivated to take those first steps with you, provide guidance, and embrace living all these years. Embracing wine definitely fits into that enterprise.

Now there’s something we can all raise a glass to.

~winehiker

*Source: The Wine Market Council

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 12:14 pm and is filed under grape squeezins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.