Tipping Points

Tuning in to changing tastes

SOPHIE PREECE

NEW GENERATIONS are toppling Baby Boomer wine buying habits, while wine consumers in general are increasingly assertive with a wine list or segment. That was the message from Master Sommelier Cameron Douglas at June’s Organic & Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference, heralding both opportunity and risk for industry members.

“Knowledge uptake, discovery of wine styles and understanding of wine and how it is perceived is evolving, creating new tipping points, allowing wine drinkers to move into other bubbles,” Cameron said in his talk on ‘international image, integrity and our future’. He shared insights from the market, and from sommeliers in Melbourne and London dealing with both an onslaught of options and increased buyer autonomy. “Wine and beverage drinkers have become much more certain about what they want to imbibe,” he said. “They have higher expectations of the product they choose and are not backwards in coming forwards in how they rate a wine.”

Sommeliers increasingly find customers have researched the winemaker, viticultural management, and backstory of a wine, using varied and evolving information sources, from podcasts and magazines to a chat with a wine specialist or friends, he said. “Sommeliers are sometimes doing a little less selling, just more specific wine buying.”

Meanwhile, wine lists are arguably getting smaller and more specific to demographics, Cameron said, with sommeliers reporting that the appetite for organics and biodynamic wines was far greater in some parts of town than others. “Each state, town, suburb and dining or retail space is different, and can attract a different set of customers, in a bubble or not.”

Cat Lomax, who heads the Marks & Spencer’s wine buying team, told Cameron that Generation Z has a completely different mindset about alcohol. While older generations often saw a glass of (value for money) wine as a way to relax at home at the end of the day, perhaps with food, the health-conscious Gen-Z was far less likely to think about drink at home. Alcohol is instead for celebrations, and “they are much more experimental” and “much, much more willing to spend more money”, she told him. “When they are celebrating, they want to show they are celebrating.”

The industry needs to be prepared for such tipping points on the horizon, Cameron said, emphasising the continued need for education at all generation levels, including around terms like organic and biodynamic.

“Change isn’t just coming, it’s here now. Millennials, Gen-Z, and soon enough Generation A, begin to dictate more of what they are looking for in a beverage. The classic wines are safe, for now, yet we need to ask this question: who is going to be drinking your wine – what variety and style – in two, five or ten short years from now?”

Cameron Douglas at the conference.

Photo Lisa Duncan