Wine needs to tell a new story, what will it be in 2026?
Slumping sales, fallow vineyards and weight loss drugs: how will the wine industry circumvent these headwinds?
Wine has to find its voice and a new story to tell in 2026.
It will be a fascinating ride and I’ll watch closely all year to see what emerges. U.S. wine sales have softened, particularly in the middle of the market. Combined with misplaced wellness trends - "‘Sober October” and “Dry January” come to mind - wine is staring down some serious headwinds.
Mix in appetite suppressant drugs, economic uncertainties and the vibe that wine is just too sophisticated and those headwinds start to feel like they should be attached to a storm warning.
My feeling is that wine will be just fine. It’s been here longer than us and will always be here. While that sounds like the George Carlin bit about ‘The Planet',’ for those of us that love wine, we want to see it strive rather than simple be fine and shake off those headwinds like ‘a bad case of fleas.’
For a long stretch, wine didn’t need to explain itself. Hollywood did that. It grew an entirely new generation of consumers when the film Sideways made Pinot Noir a household name. But the free advertising from a 2004 film seems to have a few decade shelf life. An entire generation has no prejiduce against Merlot.
A few years later, Hollywood did it again. To a lesser extent on a critical scale, Bottle Shock kept the wine train moving on the big screen in 2008.
The next breakthrough moment for wine won’t look like Sideways. There likely won’t be a single cultural event that suddenly makes a grape variety fashionable again.
Ideally, the wine industry figures out the best way to tell its story is sitting there, just waiting. Consumers increasingly want to know who they’re supporting, how products are made and whether their dollars stay in local communities there lies wine.
At its core, wine remains one of the most traceable consumer products available. Thousands of wineries across the country are still family-run operations where you can point directly to who farmed the land, who made the wine and where the money goes. Many of those producers are also deeply committed to responsible practices, whether that be dry farming, organic practice or regenerative agriculture.
