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We're Drinking More Wine

Wine & Spirits Daily: Wine Consumption on the Rise
“Millennials, Baby Boomers and Hispanics are helping the industry overall. For example, Millennials, which constitute about 70 million people, are more willing to experiment with bottles at lower price points because they “are not as sophisticated about wine as proceeding generations.”
Millennials are not as “sophisticated about wine as proceeding generations”? You have to be kidding me! Whoever wrote that was not there when we Baby Boomers started to drink wine. We knew less than nothing and there were few places to learn. Our parents never drank wine, there was no Internet and Blogs to learn from, there really weren’t any wine publications, no wine bars and few wine shops outside of the largest cities. We drank Mateus, Blue Nun, Tyrolia, Riunite and Hearty Burgundy. It seems to me that new wine drinkers today are drinking a little better than that.

Many Millennials grew up with their parents drinking wine at the table and that’s a major difference. They’re comfortable with wine as a beverage and, if anything, are less snobby about wine and less afraid to make a mistake than their Baby Boomer parents. The Baby Boomers may have been the wine pioneers for Americans, but it is the Millennials that are making it part of daily life in the European tradition. The explosion of wine blogs, most penned by Millennials, well represents this weaving of wine into our culture as, instead of relying on the voices of few wine gurus, hundreds of young wine lovers are sharing the pleasure and excitement of their discovery of the world of wine.

We’re just entering the golden age of wine drinking in the United States and the Millennials are leading the way. As a Baby Boomer, I plan on enjoying the ride.

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