Millenial buyers, friend or foe?

The coming generation of drinkers in the United States are more wine-focused, more adventurous, and more willing to pay for new experiences -- whether we call them Millenials or not! This overarching trend has powerful implications for the future shape and health of the wine business. To investigate it first-hand, removing some of my own selection bias (and replacing it with another), I went this past weekend to the San Francisco Vintner's Market, Spring 2017. I hoped to better understand the buying and drinking tastes of this emerging group, while also leveraging the chance to connect with an array of wine makers for a new entrepreneurial business venture.

What I found confirmed some hypotheses and confounded others -- acknowledging that a group of those in San Francisco willing to spend $50-150 for 5 hours of unlimited drinking might introduce a certain sampling bias. Nonetheless while the crowd was over-represented in some dimensions it represented a diverse group of buyers, spanning professional, gender, and other metrics -- while focusing in on a younger audience who saw the opportunity as a combined social event and wine tasting.

There were more than 100+ exhibitors present, offering tastes of their wines, many highly regarded by third party publications; many more highly regarded by personal acclamation. (The two did not always overlap). One surprising finding was just how small some of the production was for a given winery: some present were truly microscale operations, producing less than 500 cases annually in some cases on less than 10 acres. These producers were offering (ostensibly free) tastings that amounted to >5% of total annual production over the course of the weekend event.

The question was,  were young drinkers, buying?

The answer: maybe? I stood by the exit and counted the 'attach rate' for bottle purchases over a 5 minute span and found a fair number of wines carried out by ones and twos, especially for the more 'serious' drinkers who paid $50-100 extra to attend the more selective and better-recognized "Reserve Room" or "Cult Room" tasting.  But most drinkers - and a selection of 10 I interviewed - were just there for the drinking. It was Saturday night, and they'd made few provisions to carry any bottles with them.

Most didn't stop to ask the winemakers questions about their production methods, their varietals, their wineries in general... but then again, do they have to? Most drinkers don't consider this when enjoying a glass of wine. And even if something like 10% did, that represents a sizeable number of purchasers -- and probably >10% of purchasing occasions - where people are caring about different dimensions of the production and distribution process.

What I did see more of, were different ways that wineries were trying to reach and market to consumers in a creative way...! That was clearly in strong effect. But that's a story for another blog post...