Hard seltzer’s popularity may be waning; can the wine business finally relax?

Hopefully not, since hard seltzer was just one of wine’s many problems. But don’t bet on it.

The news traveled through the cyber-ether last week so quickly that it was past viral: “Is the hard seltzer craze turning sour?” “Has the hard seltzer bubble popped?” “America’s Taste for Hard Seltzer is Suddenly Starting to Wane”

One trade editor even emailed me: Did you see this? Is there a story here?

So huge massive news, since hard seltzer’s growth over the past couple of years has often been cited as the reason younger consumers aren’t drinking wine. And, if true, raises another question: If hard seltzer has fizzed out, can the wine business relax? Does this mean younger consumers, bored with Truly and White Claw and all the rest, will reach for a bottle of wine?

The answer? No.

NO.

NONONONONO!!!!!!!!!

Hard seltzer, as noted here and elsewhere, was just one example of wine’s problems with younger consumers. It was everything that they think wine isn’t – cheap, low in calories, low in sugar, low in alcohol, low in carbs, and convenient. Pop a top, get just a little buzz, and smile. Anyone who thinks hard seltzer’s troubles mean they will move to a product that comes with an indecipherable label, requires a special tool to open, comes in mostly big bottles, and doesn’t disclose calories or ingredients is kidding themselves.

In other words, way too much of the wine business. Or as Wine Business Monthly columnist Jake Lorenzo put it recently, “A class system is developing, and the wine business is not only welcoming it, but we are driving it. In Wine Country things are not getting back to normal, they are wallowing in abnormal.”

Think of hard seltzer as a kind of fast fashion, cheap and interesting and then forgotten. So if it does wane (and the second link at the top isn’t quite so sure about that), younger consumers who see wine as bougie and old-fashioned will just find something else that isn’t wine.

Because that’s what has happened over the past decade. Yes, this month’s controversial Gallup poll may have had its flaws, but it didn’t miss the point. I talked to a leading European wine analyst for a trade story about something completely different; so, of course, we ended up talking about wine and younger consumers.

As we were looking at her numbers, I said, “These can’t be right. Your surveys show that wine has lost the two youngest generations in the U.S. and Britain.” And she nodded (it was a Zoom call), and said, “Yes, it has.”

And hard seltzer is far from the only reason.