On Declining Per Capita Wine Consumption: Are We Reliving 1986 or 1993?
Is it just the beginning or the beginning of the end? Or something else?
No one knows for sure which direction the American wine market will move in the coming few years. They may tell you they know or that they are seeing indications of this or that trajectory, but the fact is they do not know.
However, we can observe objective data.
This graph depicts per-resident wine consumption in gallons from 1960 to the present based on data provided by the California Wine Institute.
What I see is that the current downturn in consumption is only the second such sustained downturn in more than 60 years. I also know that despite it not showing up yet in Wine Institute data, 2026 also saw a decrease in per capita wine consumption. Finally, all indications suggest that per capita wine consumption will continue to decline in 2026.
Perhaps it’s an academic question, but it’s worth asking if the current decline in wine consumption, now in its 5th straight year according to this data, will outlast the consumption decline that lasted from 1986 to 1992—a seven-year stretch? Or better yet, maybe we should ask if we have already exceeded that earlier decline.
If you look at this chart, you see a decline in consumption in 2019. Per-resident consumption moves from 3 gallons in 2018 to 2.94 in 2019. Then, the pandemic hits with its stay-at-home dynamic and money printed and sent out to households and the accompanying spike in alcohol sales and consumption. This spike lasts for two years, 2020 and 2021, and per-resident consumption jumps to 3.16 gallons per person. Then, in 2022, consumption starts to drop.
It’s reasonable to assume that the structural decline in U.S. per-resident wine consumption began in 2019 and the pandemic drinking was simply an interruptive blip that masked the structural decline that became evident to everyone by 2023. If that is, in fact, the case, then we are currently in the 8th year of a structural decline in wine consumption in the United States—a longer stretch than the late '80s/early '90s decline.
At this point, it might be worth asking if there are enough similarities between the conditions that led to the decline from 40 years ago and today’s decline in consumption.