Yesterday at the Direct to Consumer Wine Symposium keynote speaker Pam Danziger presented some sobering statistics about the new wine consumer. Using demographic analysis and her own experience with luxury goods marketing she made a compelling case for the wine industry entering a ‘luxury drought’ until 2020 when the Millennial generation will become the main consumer of higher end wine and have the disposable income to do so. I’ve seen this ‘new normal’ discussed before in my work in the retail industry but had not seen this argument applied to luxury wine before yesterday. Jeff Quackenbush has done a good job of summarizing Ms. Danziger’s main points in the source link below.
This data counters my enthusiasm for higher end wine sales recovering as predicted last year and makes the recent increase in higher end wine sales reported a couple days ago look like it might be a spike and not the start of a trend. Time will tell the tale here and I’ll continue to watch this closely.
Update: Jim Gordon covers the keynote at Wines & Vines