{"id":549252,"date":"2026-06-23T01:54:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T01:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/549252\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T01:54:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T01:54:24","slug":"alcohol-consumption-is-tanking-among-youths-so-wine-brands-are-chasing-gen-z-with-nascar-and-wwe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/549252\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcohol consumption is tanking among youths, so wine brands are chasing Gen Z with NASCAR and WWE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Which wine pairs well with Shark Week? Does a pinot noir have enough acidity to cut through the grime of a Tough Mudder race? Is a big, brassy cabernet bold enough of a quaff for a night of\u00a0naming dead rodents after an ex<\/a>?<\/p>\n

And is a wine named SEX too provocative or not provocative enough?<\/p>\n

Absurd as they may sound, these are the questions\u00a0haunting wine marketers<\/a>\u00a0grappling with slumping sales and increasingly elusive drinkers. How consumers \u2014\u00a0especially younger drinkers<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 answer them will determine whether an industry long defined by fuddy-duddy pretense can find its footing in 2026 and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat self-important way that wine can refer to itself \u2014 we\u2019re really trying to tip that on its head,\u201d said Helen Kurtz, chief of marketing for The Wine Group, which hopes that offerings such as its easy-drinking Cupcake Vineyards wines can attract a generation that came of age on Frappuccinos and gas station BuzzBallz.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about being less serious about ourselves, because that\u2019s what this consumer is demanding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

By which she means partnering the company\u2019s MD 20\/20 (yes, it\u2019s a wine) with World Wrestling Entertainment matches (\u201cMad Dog Enters the Ring\u201d), and launching the aptly named Fuel by Franzia line of boxed wine beverages for NASCAR (\u201cFull Throttle Flavor\u201d).<\/p>\n

Alcohol consumption has dropped<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fresh lesson on the importance of finding your customer rather than hoping they find you. Because almost across the board, alcohol consumption is down, a trend that accelerated post-pandemic. A host of factors is at play, including aging Boomers\u00a0seeking healthier lifestyles<\/a>, Gen Z\u2019s gravitation to\u00a0low- and no-alcohol beverages<\/a>, and widening availability of\u00a0alternatives such as marijuana<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Each segment of the alcohol industry \u2014 valued at around $560 billion in the U.S. \u2014 is responding differently. Hard liquor, for example, has found a rare growth category in ready-to-drink\u00a0canned cocktails<\/a>. But the wine industry faces its own constellation of challenges, many of its own making.<\/p>\n

For anyone new to wine \u2014 particularly much-coveted 20-somethings \u2014 finding one\u2019s way can be daunting, something of a Ch\u00e2teau du Stuffy effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got a bunch of things, what you might call friction points, with wine, that are particularly salient to younger consumers,\u201d including cost and drinkability, said Christian Miller, director of research for the Wine Market Council.<\/p>\n

A pretentious image keeps some customers away<\/p>\n

Wine, from the labels to the language used to describe it, historically has leaned pricy and pretentious (looking at you, \u201cnotes of asphalt and barnyard\u201d). Wine trends also have favored boozy and bracing styles, a hard sell for folks used to sipping hard seltzers at the club.<\/p>\n

Fewer than a third of Gen-Z households own a corkscrew, according to a trends report by the British household products company Lakeland. Even simply trying a wine comes with a gatekeeper: Hard liquor is easy to sample at a bar or as single-shot nips; most wine requires a full-bottle commitment.<\/p>\n

A cadre of wineries has begun pushing the bounds of wine culture by ditching the fussy fa\u00e7ade in favor of a sassy vibe and accessible language. Price matters, too (the sweet spot seems to be the $8 to $20 a bottle range), but not nearly so much as the message.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about using contemporary communication to pitch \u201csomething that\u2019s been made for centuries,\u201d said Charles Smith, founder of House of Smith, the company behind younger, shopper-friendly brands such as Kung Fu Girl Riesling and SEX Ros\u00e9. \u201cMy mantra is always to communicate the language of wine to everyone because not everyone speaks wine. The wine should be a reflection of the consumer who is going to buy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can tie-ins to pop culture make wine more relatable?<\/p>\n

Bogle Family Wine Collection has leaned in with its Juggernaut Wines. Adorned with almost graphically violent labels showcasing alpha predators \u2014 a shark, a grizzly, an orca, a lion and some sort of particularly angry bird of prey \u2014 the bottles are a far cry from the placid villas and languorous ladies plastered across so many wines.<\/p>\n

The other side of it is getting those bottles into spaces not traditionally associated with wine, said Jessica LaBounty, the company\u2019s marketing director. For two years, Juggernaut has announced \u201cAdventure awaits\u201d as it sponsored the grueling Tough Mudder races. They\u2019ve also done placements at zoos that host nights where people can name dead rodents and insects after former partners and feed them to the animals. Cheers\u2026?<\/p>\n

And this year, it\u2019s Discovery<\/a> network\u2019s\u00a0Shark Week.<\/a>\u00a0Juggernaut\u2019s chardonnay label sports an especially snappish great white and \u201cjust the right amount of bite.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe viewer base of Shark Week lines up really, really nicely with who we know our consumer to be,\u201d LaBounty said. \u201cIt\u2019s another way to meet them where they are already versus kind of asking them to come to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learning to speak Gen Z is key<\/p>\n

The goal is to bridge a generational divide in which wine got lost. Younger drinkers don\u2019t and won\u2019t talk about wine the way older drinkers do. To point, there\u2019s a clever social media meme about a Millennial marketing team pitching wine vs. a Gen-Z social media team. The Millennial effort goes on at length about terroir and full-bodied flavors. Gen-Z\u2019s pitch? \u201cit\u2019s giving\u2026 yummy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Vibe is everything for Bread & Butter Wines, with the tagline, \u201cDon\u2019t overthink it.\u201d As in, pair their red blend with a candy charcuterie board. Or their pinot noir with a Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich. Want fries with that? Try their prosecco.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe No. 1 goal is to disrupt the shelf because it is so crowded,\u201d said Caitlin Ward, brand and digital marketing director. \u201cSassiness is a way to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

J.M. Hirsch is a longtime food writer who was food editor of The Associated Press for nearly a decade until 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Which wine pairs well with Shark Week? Does a pinot noir have enough acidity to cut through the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,135278,8297,7536],"class_list":["post-549252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nascar","tag-wine","tag-wwe"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116796933297076446","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}