BOTTLE SHOCK: California winery owner gives hottest take yet on why industry is dying.
The owner of a Sonoma County winery believes the industry is dying because Boomers are.
Jon Phillips, the owner of Sonoma County winery Inspiration Vineyards and Winery, told The Post that the population decline of the industry’s top wine-consuming generation has led to a recent downturn in sales.
“A lot of people have a misconception that the Boomers are drinking less,” he said. “This cannot be emphasized enough: it’s not because the Boomers are drinking less, it’s because there are less Boomers.”
Phillips, a Boomer himself at 65 who has produced wine since 1999, says Gen X has been unable to fill the void left by their forebears.
“These were the people that were really responsible for joining wine clubs and Gen X that came after boomers just weren’t really into wine to the same level that the boomers were into wine,” he said.
At one point he struggled with his wine club subscription service, but not because of demand or inferior wine.
“It’s because my customers literally were dying,” he said.
He says in conjunction with the declining Baby Boomer demand is less interest from younger generations like Gen Z and Millennials who have slowly adopted wine. Other factors like tariffs and recent wildfires have hurt wine-growing and producing operations, he added. He also pins new negative messaging concerning alcohol on declining sales.
Jeremy Clarkson writes that for British young people, booze is increasingly being replaced with the stickiest of the icky: “Of course Gen Z loves weed, it’s kale in a Rizla” rolling paper.
Well obviously, health is now an issue because someone with pink armpit hair and a keffiyeh recently decided that if you to go to the pub with your mates and have a couple of pints and a laugh and maybe a kebab on the way home, you may become a red-nosed Tory. Far better to do a downward dog and drink something effervescent from a monk’s limestone well in Nepal. But actually, if you talk to Gen-Z kids, they will tell you that beer at £6 a pint is the main problem. Because £6 may as well be £6 million if you have a student loan to pay off and you’re not prepared to earn a bit extra by going online and putting things in your front bottom.
These kids say they haven’t lost the desire to get a bit of a buzz on with their mates; they’ve simply worked out that weed costs a hell of a lot less than going to the pub and they have a point. One round of drinks for four is £24. A gram of weed is about half that. And remember, they have been told this drug comes from a plant which means it snuggles nicely in the war underbelly of the socialist, woke, anti-meat agenda. It’s kale in a Rizla.
Cheap. Fun. And healthier than booze. But is it? When I was at school no one had mental health issues. There were kids that had what we called ants in their pants and others who were a bit miserable occasionally, but these things could be cured with a bit of light bullying over a nice pint.
Today, you’re weird if you don’t have a mental health issue of some kind. Last year, ten million employees claimed they were suffering from something with a modern acronym. One in five snowflakes and Gen-Z kids actually took time off work because of it. Every year, the cost to the economy is reckoned to be £57 billion.
And worse, as Glenn spotted last week: Adolescent cannabis use linked to doubling risk of psychotic and bipolar disorders.
(Classical reference in headline.)
