Women wine drinkers out numbering the men

Female wine drinkers in America now outnumber men at 54% to 46% when it comes to overall consumption. When it comes to those in the high frequency consumption category, women now comprise 50% of the market. The Wine Market Council—an independent, nonprofit trade association—and the Nielsen Company recently reported these findings on U.S. consumer wine and other alcohol trends including the claim that women are also a new driving force in whiskey trends and sales.

Of the 230 million adults in the U.S., Wine Market Council found that 40% drink wine as of August 2014. Wine Market Council breaks down the wine drinking population into two groups—33% who are defined as high frequency wine drinkers, that is they drink wine more often than once a week, and 67% who are occasional wine drinkers, that is they drink wine once a week or less often. This translates into approximately 30,360,000 high frequency wine drinkers and 61,640,000 occasional wine drinkers. This high frequency wine-drinking group drinks 81% of the total wine consumed in the U.S. Of the total wine drinking population, 54% are female and 46% are male. By generation, 29% of the total wine drinking population consists of Millennials (1977-1994), 18% are Generation X (1965-1976), 41% are Baby Boomers (1946-1964), and 12% are older (1945-earlier).

High-Frequency Wine Drinkers are Consuming More Wine:

Although most high frequency wine drinkers report their wine consumption has remained the same over the past year (61%), as a group, their wine consumption is rising overall. Over one-third (37%) increased their consumption over the past year and consumption decreased for only 2%. This results in a net positive of 35 percentage points.

High-Frequency Wine Drinking Millennials are Drinking More Wine:

The total wine drinking population continues to grow as the youngest Millennials turn the legal drinking age of 21 in 2015. In terms of wine consumption in 2014 versus a year ago, 59% of Millennial high frequency wine drinkers said that they are drinking more wine, whereas 39% of Generation X, 27% of Baby Boomers, and 13% of those 69 and older, claimed to drink more wine than they did the previous year.

In terms of other types of wine, beer, and spirits consumed at least monthly by high frequency wine drinkers, 62% of Millennials consume sparkling or champagne each month, whereas only 33% of Generation X, 21% of Baby Boomers, and 13% of those over 69 consume sparkling or champagne each month. Looking at beer, 86% of Millennial high frequency wine drinkers drink beer each month, whereas 79% of Generation X, 67% of Baby Boomers, and 51% of those 69 or over drink beer monthly. When it comes to spirits, 67% of Millennial high frequency wine drinkers drink spirits monthly, whereas 61% of Generation X, 56% Baby Boomers, and 52% of those 69 and over, drink spirits on a monthly basis.

High-Frequency Wine Drinking Millennials Drink More of Their Fair Share:

Most of the wine consumed in this country is consumed by Baby Boomers, but closely followed by Millennials. Despite the fact that the largest proportion of U.S. wine drinkers are Baby Boomers (41%), and the gap between the representation of Baby Boomers and Millennials is fairly wide (29% of total wine drinkers are Millennials), the gap between the proportion of the total wine volume these two generations consume is much narrower – Baby Boomers consume 37% and Millennials consume 34%. Moreover, the volume of wine Millennials consume exceeds their representation among U.S. wine drinkers (29% of total wine drinkers are Millennials, but Millennials drink 34% of total wine consumed), while the volume of wine Baby Boomers consume underrepresents their proportion of total U.S. wine drinkers (41% of total wine drinkers are Baby Boomers, and they drink 37% of total wine consumed).
Source: Wine Market Council High Frequency Tracking Study, November 2014