Wine Openers

If you’ve been out cruising downtown any night this winter, you’ve probably noticed how busy some of the city’s more-popular restaurants have been.

And if you looked twice, you might also have noticed how many of those guests with a glass of wine in front of them were younger women.

Winemaker Garrett Portra talks business during a open house at Carlson Vineyards. A recent survey says Millennialls last year purchased 42 percent of all wine drunk in this country.

That trend gets analyzed in a recent report from the Wine Market Council, which says people in their 20s and early-to-mid 30s now drink almost half the wine bought in the US.

What’s more, in what’s called the “high-frequency drinker” segment, women under 30 women are out-purchasing men two-to-one when it comes to wine.

Now, “high-frequency drinker” isn’t as lascivious as it sounds. According to the WMC, it refers to someone who drinks wine more than once a week. That faction buys and consumes 81 percent of all the wine drunk in America, says WMC.

Again, the WMC report says Baby Boomers account for the largest group in the high-frequency class, but Millennials (those people born between 1978 and 1995) are right behind them, making up 30 percent of frequent drinkers.

How fast the kids grow up. Read more…