Under-30s are drinking less and less wine and gravitating towards other beverages, placing a sector that generates 22 billion euros and nearly 200,000 jobs in Spain under serious strain
There is one statistic that keeps many Spanish winery owners awake at night. Only one in four young people aged between 16 and 24 includes wine among their regular consumption habits. The rest have replaced it with other options, abandoned it altogether, or simply never incorporated it into their daily lives. In a country that leads the world in vineyard surface area and has woven part of its cultural identity around this drink, the question is unavoidable: is wine losing an entire generation?
The figures point in that direction, though with nuance. The consumption of alcohol among young Spaniards has fallen to historic lows since reliable records have been kept, reflecting a generational shift in the consumption patterns of so-called Generation Z — a trend that is by no means exclusively Spanish but is replicated across other markets worldwide. However, the matter is more complex than a straightforward rejection of alcohol. What is actually happening is a profound reshaping of how and when people drink, and wine is bearing the brunt of that process more than any other category.
New generations are redefining their socialising habits, moving away from traditional nightlife and gravitating towards lighter cocktails, low-alcohol drinks and options perceived as more contemporary and accessible. Wine, with its image as a product associated with older generations, formal occasions or a prior knowledge that many young people neither possess nor have time to acquire, does not slot easily into that new model of consumption.
Around 30 per cent of consumers in the hospitality sector say they drink less alcohol than a year ago, a trend driven by three mutually reinforcing factors: a growing desire for a healthier lifestyle, spending restraint in the context of sustained inflation, and the normalisation of alcohol-free or low-alcohol alternatives. Non-alcoholic wine is growing in this context, but its dealcoholised version still meets resistance from purist consumers and has yet to fully win over young people in search of something genuinely different.
There is, however, a more encouraging reading worth not overlooking. Some international studies suggest that Generation Z is not as abstemious as previously thought: the proportion of young people of legal drinking age who report having consumed alcohol in the past six months has grown considerably over the last two years. When young people do drink, they tend to experiment across more categories than their elders, though their relationship with wine remains more distant than with spirits or cocktails.
The pattern that emerges is clear: wine is ceasing to be an everyday drink and is becoming a more occasional and selective choice. Fewer litres are being sold, but at higher prices. The consumer who persists in the habit tends to be older, whilst households with children and young adults are the segments where the decline has been most pronounced. The sector, in short, is becoming smaller but more expensive — a paradox that may be sustainable in the short term but that nobody can say how long it will hold without a new generation of drinkers to replace the current one.
Those who know the market well argue that the problem does not lie in any lack of interest on the part of young people in wine itself, but rather in the fact that the sector has built around the product an unnecessary complexity that pushes people away rather than drawing them in. New consumers are looking for a drink that accompanies a moment without becoming the centre of attention — no rituals, no specialist vocabulary. The wine that adapts to that demand will have a future. The wine that does not risks losing a whole generation.
Sobrelías Redacción
Sobrelías Redacción