2022 of wine in the USA, where the wine lover is aging, and the Millennials focus on cans and bio

Although today the volumes of wine consumed in the US represent the same share of spirits, equal to 11%, in the future there are many challenges to be faced, starting from the downward trajectory, which will not change direction, which has already been embarked for some time, which deduct the ready-to-drink and spirits competition. Changing the priorities of consumers, the wine industry will have to know how to adapt to an increasingly elderly consumer, but also more affluent, who looks with greater interest at the premium segment, as revealed by the latest data from Wine Intelligence. Between 2018 and 2021, also due to the pandemic, the population of habitual wine consumers dropped by 15%, and to abandon the Bacchus are especially the youngest ones. Consequently, as mentioned, the average age rises, and the reason, as explained by Richard Halstead, at the helm of Wine Intelligence, is simple: “the closure of bars and restaurants in the period of Covid-19, that is the social context where the younger ones usually share a glass of wine”. Furthermore, the moderation of consumption restricts consumption opportunities, pushing people to choose what they know and love, rather than to discover new things.
To understand what 2022 will be like on the US market for the world of wine, Wine Intelligence has therefore lined up the 7 trends that will influence the upcoming months. The first is premiumization, that is, the increase in the average expense for a bottle of wine, which will lead to the consequent drop in sales of wines that cost below 10 dollars. This is also a consequence of an average wine lover who will be increasingly elitist, wealthy, and over 55, with normal drinkers who, on the other hand, will have to deal with the increase in the cost of living and inflation, thus suggesting a certain polarization of consumption. The second trend concerns the reopening of bars and restaurants at full capacity, which however faces a decline in attendance and frequency of consumption. In the future, however, the wine list will be more limited, as the shock of the pandemic suggests, which has left many restaurants with stocks that are impossible to manage, but also the lack of staff. E-commerce, on the other hand, will continue to reach more and more consumers, maintaining the levels reached in 2020 and 2021, and attracting more and more investments from the wine industry.
In addition, general knowledge of wine among constant consumers in the United States is declining, as part of a broader global trend, and probably caused by the wider access to information online, from wine apps to platforms that allow users to review the labels, dynamics underlying the process known as “cognitive offloading”, or “Google effect”, so call the tendency to forget the information that we access easily and quickly online. The consumption of canned wine will grow, but even this is no longer a novelty, which has doubled its sales since 2018. 40% of Millennials who know wines in cans buy them, against 22% of the medium and 8% of Boomers.
Natural or sustainable wine is destined to attract more and more attention, especially among Millennials. Two out of five consumers know natural wine, and 16% bought it at least once in 2021, this is the only growing category compared to 2020. Finally, the latest trend concerns the need for wine brands to rethink their commercial strategy based on all the changes described so far, which concern the off-premise and on-premise channels, but also the disaffection of many consumers, the need to simplify wine education, and the growth of price range above $ 20 per bottle.