WINE'S NEWEST SIPPERS: Twentysomethings

Trend-setting drinkers are switching from beer and martinis

May 20, 2006

BY KELLEY L. CARTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

For Amber Shapiro, drinking typically meant cocktails with girlfriends -- not necessarily because the drinks tasted good, but because they were what everyone else her age was drinking.

That all changed when the 22-year-old University of Michigan grad took a trip to Argentina.

"Wine is huge there," she says. "I think that wine has become this thing to do. When my friends and I turned 21, we did it to savor the taste, as opposed to just drinking to drink. Wine is a very social thing now."

Shapiro -- who is heading back to Argentina in June to work and live for a year -- is part of the growing number of young wine drinkers.

"We found a 33% increase of young drinkers in the last five years and a 50% increase in young men," says Patrick Coyle, spokesman for Dancing Bull Wine, a company that markets to younger wine consumers. "It's probably the largest generation we've seen since the baby boom generation. We have high hopes in the wine industry for this generation continuing their interest in wine."

Wine industry surveys and polls say that young people between 21 and 29 are increasingly moving toward wine as their drink of choice. For the first time ever, wine overtook beer as the alcoholic beverage of choice for Americans last summer. And in the younger age group, beer has taken a dip in popularity, while wine has significantly increased, according to the Wine Market Council. To this younger group of drinkers, wine is the more sophisticated beverage of choice, but not everyone knows how to consume or purchase it.