Going Forward, The Wine Will Match the Dress
As we have noted on this page several times before, wine goes through fashions. From broad trends such as the rise of American wines’ share of the pie compared to imported wine, to the drop of Merlot sales due to a movie, to dry French rosés, to many, many others. One of the macro trends was red wine’s surging share of the business during the 90’s. Sparked partially by a now famous 60 Minutes episode which aired in 1991 called The French Paradox which concluded that drinking red wine was good for one’s health. The following year, red wine sales in America surged 40%. Add in the soaring quality of Napa Cabernet at that time and suddenly, all weddings were Red Weddings.
Commencing in the early 2000’s, the tide started to turn. In 2000 white wine sales (as a share of total) was a bit above 40%; that number is now right around 50% of the total. Add in sparkling wine (thank you Prosecco) and rose wine and the red wine share is contracting significantly. It’s interesting to note that in France, wine sales are about one-third each for red, white and rose. There are several possible reasons for this white wine trend:
- Health: looking at an unnamed bottle of Napa Cabernet in our office—it clocks in at 15.2% alcohol. A bottle of a current favorite white—Massican ‘Annia’—comes in at 12.3%, meaning the red is 23% higher…not an insignificant difference (especially the next morning).
- Dining habits: Four-course dinners in white table-clothed restaurants are much less common with millennials and Gen Z than they were with baby-boomers; Today we share plates or ‘graze’ and we order wine flights or numerous wines by the glass in order to ‘pair’ the wine and food—that opens the door to more white wine
- Profitability: Everything else being equal, white wine is more profitable for the wineries. We’ll be drinking some 2024 white wines by the spring of 2025…while most red wines will still be sitting in oak barrels for many more months. Not only are the barrels expensive ($1200 to $2000), but time is money too—getting some cash back in the spring is very useful to wineries.
Adding to red wine’s slide (for all wines actually) are things like the boom in RTD’s, the ‘Zero-Proof’ trend, and of course, the legalization of marijuana. What this all means to die-hard red wine drinkers in unclear, but it might mean that with fewer consumers chasing the good stuff, prices will relax, but that remains to be seen. What is for sure however is the oft-quoted statement from a famous British wine merchant/journalist Harry Waugh (now deceased) “the first duty of wine is to be red” no longer applies. To us the first duty of wine is to be delicious, be it red, white or pink.