Consumers: USA and UK Millennials “betray” beer, and more importantly, wine, for hard liquor

If the Millennials are the ones designated to guide the future of wine consumption, we cannot really count on them too much. There are various reasons, like research on the subject that reveals young consumers are not loyal to brands, or to different types of wine, and although they love knowledge and experimenting, they are not that fascinated by the wine world, but they see wine as a “social” drink more than a cultural product. Further, it is also because more and more they evidently prefer other types of alcoholic beverages. At any rate, this is what is happening on the two key markets today for international and Italian wine, USA and UK, as the magazine “Wine Industry Insight” highlighted. According to data from the BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research Survey of 2017 and 2018, young people’s preferences for spirits are growing, while beer and wine are dropping.
In 2017, 36% of Millennials said they preferred liquor and other spirits while in 2018 the share has jumped to 41%. At the same time, beer has dropped from 40% to 39%, and wine, the most penalized sector by this change of trend, from 22% to 18%.
However, beer remains the most consumed beverage, at 49% of the alcohol market share among young people, followed by spirits (26%) and wine (21%).