US Wine Market: Hi-Octane Heaven

Mea culpa, wine industry.

Writers like myself have been whining about high-alcohol wines for decades, at the same time that serious (and boring) lifestyle writers boast about Gen Z's healthy lifestyle of vegan bean burgers and no-alcohol soirées.

Well, guess what type of wine is growing sales faster than any other? High-alcohol wines of 14.6 percent and up.

Yeah, yeah, we all want to be healthy. But sometimes, apparently we just want to get wasted.

The paradigm-shifting data comes from an annual report by Azur Associates, a Napa-based beverage analytic firm. Most of the data in the report you've seen before. Wine sales overall are down.

But this you probably haven't seen: NIQ measured retail sales growth based on alcohol content. And by far the hottest category (in more ways than one) is high-alcohol wines. While sales of wine (by dollars spent) overall in retail stores were down 7 percent in 2024, high-alcohol wine sales bucked the trend, rising 7.7 percent.

Danny Brager, one of Azur Associates' managing directors, said that the results are complicated because they include a whole category of high-alcohol wines that enophiles may not have heard of. These include XXL, fruit-flavored fortified Moscato wines; Lolli, sweet reds made by Gallo; and Buzzball Chillers, made from fruit juices, cream, wine and in some cases caffeine, and conveniently stacked next to the cash register at gas stations for that 1970s-style "one for the road" experience.

But, Brager added, thriving high-alcohol wines also include bottles beloved by Wine-Searcher readers, such as Caymus, Hartford Court, Silverado Vineyards and Sequoia Grove.

"You have this traditional stuff, Cabs and Zins," Brager told Wine-Searcher. "Then you have this higher-alcohol stuff that young people are using for partying."

Say what? Gen Z isn't all about cannabis gummies, tofu lasagne and kombucha? They're not cutting back because the World Health Organization says a single sip of alcohol will kill you as well as any dogs or cats that happen to be in the room?

In fact, fellow Azur Associates managing director Dale Stratton reminded us that in 2022, a hot TikTok meme was the Taylor Port challenge, in which young folks would post videos of themselves draining a big glass of the 18 percent alcohol fortified wine.

"There's always been a market for high-alcohol wines," Stratton said. "They come in different forms: MD 20-20, Wild Irish Rose. It looks like right now people are being really overt about it."

Moderate growth

It's worth pointing out that moderate alcohol wines – from 10 to 12 percent – also grew in sales dollars by 0.4 percent. This group of wines includes many white blends, the hottest varietal category (up 18.9 percent from a small base), as well as some Pinot Grigios (up 3 percent) and Sauvignon Blancs (broke even).

Every other category of alcohol percentage, AND every other grape variety, dropped in sales in 2024.

Surprisingly, despite the attention for low-alcohol wines (less than 8 percent), they seem to have jumped the shark, dropping 9.2 percent in 2024. Meanwhile, no-alcohol wines grew 27 percent from a small base, showing that sometimes people want to have fun, and sometimes they do not.

"I think this is about occasions," Brager said. "There are some occasions where you're looking for some things that are better for you. And there's other times where you're like, 'Screw it'.

"Some of the messaging is, it's all one thing or the other. People always go to these extremes that everything's doing good or doing bad, and that's not the real world. When I look at the top 100 brands, 40 percent of them are doing well. The [wine] category's not doing well but plenty of brands are doing well."

One thing certain from the report is this is not the boomer-era wine market. Brager pointed out that dining has changed, with 36 percent fewer fine dining restaurants in the US than in 2017. These are the places that sell the kind of restrained, sommelier-friendly 12-14.5 percent alcohol wines that dropped 3.6 percent in 2024.

Stratton said it's important for wineries not to overreact to the last three years of bad statistics, nor to dive into a category just because it's hot now. Case in point: the last Next Big Thing, rosé, dropped 8.5 percent in 2024. There might not be room for another BuzzBallz at gas-station cash registers.

But high-alcohol red wines are simply not as unpopular with the public as they are with those of us in the Fourth Estate.

"I don't think it's about alcohol for these Cabernet brands," Stratton said. "It's about style. It's hitting a wine style that people like."

I hope Robert Parker reads this. He will feel vindicated.