Why Millennials?

There are 70 million millennials in America. All are at or near the legal drinking age. Of those, 55% percent choose high-end wines.

Millennials age 21 – 35 are the children of the largest generation in American history. While only a quarter of this population drink wine several times a week or more, when they do choose wine, they choose “higher-end” selections 2-to-1. In other words, the young generation that already chooses premium coffee, prefers microbrews, and demands the best ingredients in their cocktails, have an interest in choosing quality and value over quantity and scale.

Yet this age group has trouble identifying which products to choose, as these anecdotal experiences I recently collected revealed to me.

“I want it to be as easy to choose fine wine as it is to order a [microbrew],” a 33-year-old suburban home-owning network administrator told me.

“How do I judge one chardonnay against another?” asked a 30-year-old moderate-income city apartment dweller.

While over half prefer fine wine, only 11% of millennials belong to a wine club of any kind.

“I learned how to order wine from experience,” a 28-year-old marketing professional said. Self-identified as a “foodie,” he reported that his comfort purchasing wine largely stems from attending business meals at New York City’s finest restaurants. Outside of major cities and major wine-growing regions, relatively few Americans of any age will ever have the opportunity to talk to a sommelier.

How do you engage customers?

Nearly three fifths of frequent wine drinkers in the Baby Boomer cohort report that they are members of at least one wine club. Ninety percent of their children are not. If the wine industry wants to engage these young wine consumers, they are going to need to find them.

And Millennials are on social media. Yet simply posting endless stories to your social media feed is not the way to build a new audience.

Content is king. If you create compelling media to engage this growing population of quality wine consumers, they will come.

 Coming soon: Part Two: Why Online Video?