FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 25 YEARS, WINE DRINKING WENT DOWN LAST YEAR
The challenge facing the wine industry is that boomers age out and millennials prefer spirits and hard liquor.
We all still love getting drunk, but HOW we’re getting drunk is changing. Last year, wine drinking in the U.S. went down by almost 1%.
That’s the first time in 25 YEARS that wine drinking went down, not up. Beer drinking went down for the fourth straight year, dropping 2.3%.
But overall, we drank MORE last year than we did in 2018, and spent more on booze. So what replaced beer and wine? Hard liquor, and hard seltzers.
The “big five” liquors, whiskey, vodka, rum, tequila, and gin, were up a total of 2.3% last year. And hard seltzers went up almost 50% so, yeah, there’s where all your wine and beer drinkers went right there.
