Month: September 2023

50% of UK Millennials Perceive Drinking and Dining as Essential Spending

Design My Night has just released the results of its city survey, with this year’s focus being on affordability.

The results show that a large proportion (83%) of participants have changed their spending habits due to the cost-of-living crisis.

However, 50% of millennials who completed the survey view drinking and dining as essential spending. The survey also shows 46% of respondents would happily spend £60 on a meal.

When asked what event people would most likely splash out on, birthdays came up as the clear winner, with 85% stating they would happily spend more for this occasion.

Katie Kirwan, head of brand and B2C at Design My Night, states: “The going may be tough right now, but going out remains important to our audience across all price points. While we’ve seen that a demand for affordability is propping up the industry, quality of spending is equally as important, and people aren’t willing to sacrifice their money for the mediocre. Hospitality’s run of it post-covid has been difficult, but our consumer survey has shown that shared experiences are still there to be catered to, and that with over 50% of millennials seeing drinking and dining as a necessity, a cost of living crisis isn’t going to hold the industry back.”

 

US Adults 55+ are drinking more alcohol according to research

The percentages of 18 to 34-year-olds, who report that they either don’t drink, drank the past week, or sometimes drank more than they should, are all lower than they were 20 years ago, according to research conducted by American analytics company Gallup.

Yet, drinking on all three metrics has trended up among Americans 55 and over, while holding fairly steady among middle-aged adults.

These results were based on an analysis of Gallup trends on Americans’ self-reports of their alcohol drinking habits. To allow for reliable analysis of the trends by age, the data was reviewed in three three-year time periods: 2001-2003, 2011-2013 and 2021-2023.

  • Adults under the age of 35, 62% reported that they drink alcohol, down from 72% two decades ago; and
  • Drinking has increased among adults aged 55 and older, from 49% to 59% in the same 20-year period.

This shows that drinking habits among younger adults may be on a downward trend, while the opposite can be said of people 55+. According to the research, there are still more drinkers under the age of 35 (62%) than in the 55 and over category (59%).

While these groups on either end of the age spectrum now report similar drinking rates, those in the middle, aged 35 to 54, maintain a higher drinking rate, at 69%, on par with the prior 67% readings for this age group.

The same trend can be seen among those classed as regular drinkers. Younger adults who drink are less likely than they were in the past to say they had an alcoholic drink within the past seven days, down from 67% to 61% over the last two decades. Older adults, aged 55 and over, have done the opposite, with figures rising from 63% to 69%.

Among all Americans (both drinkers and nondrinkers), fewer than four in 10 young adults (38%) now appear to be regular drinkers, on par with older adults (40%) with middle-aged adults (48%) more likely.

Research Results:  https://news.gallup.com/poll/509501/six-americans-drink-alcohol.aspx

Bodegas Familiares de Rioja leaves the Plenary Session of the Regulatory Council due to its strategic policy

The Rioja Family Winery Association withdraws from the management tables of the Denomination of Qualified Origin (DOCa) Rioja, the Plenary of the Regulatory Council, and the Interprofessional of Rioja Wine, due to its disagreement with the strategic policy, which goes against the business model of the small and medium-sized wineries.

The announcement was made public this week by its President, Eduardo Hernáiz, in an information conference, together with his Vice President and spokesperson on the Regulatory Council, Juan Carlos Sancha, and manager, Ana Jiménez, after the two assemblies of the association, which They have supported the decision, unanimously, they have indicated.

The group was established in 1991 by twenty winegrowers and small wineries in Rioja and currently has almost 70 members with 216 which are accredited in the management bodies of the Denomination of the Interprofessional and Regulatory Council tables.

This representation translates into over half of the total of the commercial branch in both management bodies. Still, its participation is limited to only 8% of this branch and 4% of the votes, as the system of representativeness of the Council.

The departure of this association from the management boards of the DOCa Rioja does not imply its abandonment of the Denomination, a region that is “the best in Spain for making wines of value and quality”, which, from its point of view, has currently lost, where volume is what prevails, the President stated.

The decision was formally communicated this week to the Rioja Wine Interprofessional Regulatory Council, the autonomous governments of La Rioja, the Basque Country and Navarra, as it is a Denomination shared by the three communities, and to the Ministry of Agriculture, as the guardian administration.

“We are Rioja, and we are going to continue being so because we have all our investments in this land and because we continue to believe in it and in its potential to make great wines,” assured the President of the Association.

However, “we do not have the capacity to redirect Rioja’s course towards a model of value, of quality”, which focuses on “sustainable viticulture and the production of quality artisanal wines”, he said.

“We are convinced – he added – that the current situation of Rioja, its wineries and winegrowers, would be very different if the policy followed in recent years had been more concerned with protecting the value of the grapes, the wines and the territory, than to produce more grapes and wine to bring Rioja to its current situation.”

Currently, the DOCa Rioja is going through “one of the biggest surplus crises in its history, sending wines to distillation,” said Hernáiz, who added that, “despite the fact that we have been producing clearly more grapes than we are capable of since 2017 to sell, large companies continued asking for new plantations until very recently.”

For his part, Sancha, one of the oldest members of the Plenary Council, has said that the historical model of the social distribution of the vineyard and wealth is being broken in favor of industrial companies, for which the bills continue to come out, among other aspects, because they sell wines from numerous sources, not only Rioja, as well as liqueurs and spirits.

“We find ourselves unable to change a business model that we do not share, since it is based on the production of wine for food shelves at prices with which small and medium-sized wineries cannot compete,” Sancha states.

The president of the Regulatory Council, Fernando Ezquerro, has conveyed to the association his interest in changing the representation system, but there is no concrete proposal and until there is a modification, which will have to be in the next elections in 2025, Bodegas Familiares will not participate in the decisions of these management bodies.

Source: https://agroinformacion.com/

 

Wines of Ukraine launch UK Head Office

Wines of Ukraine has recently established a UK head office to help further grow its reputation on the international stage.

The organization, formed in 2021, is made up of 15 members, comprising craft wineries with an overwhelming majority of pre-war sales rooted in the domestic market. The organization has had a strong presence at this year’s London Wine Fair and Prowein.

With the proposed UK import operation now beginning to take shape, Wines of Ukraine will host its inaugural tasting for the UK trade and media on Monday, October 9th at 67 Pall Mall in London

At its first UK tasting, there will be 11 wineries from six wine regions, that will show 60+ wines, covering different styles, including sparkling wines, unfiltered orange wines and sweet wines, reds, whites, and rosés.

Tania Olevska, marketing and PR director of Wines of Ukraine UK, states: “Our producers are excited to meet and present their bottles to wine professionals in the UK this autumn.  Now is the right time to bring the wines of Ukraine to the UK, when we have a high quality and a good range of styles – all of which are confirmed by high ratings at international wine competitions and great feedback from both professionals and consumers.”

The full-scale war unleashed by Russia has significantly affected the state of Ukraine’s wine industry with some wineries being occupied, and others being damaged and looted. Some of the vineyards are mined and not cultivated, and the local market has shrunk. However, in 2022, Ukrainian wines began to be discovered worldwide and today they are represented in the UK, USA, Japan, Poland, Baltic, and Nordic countries, amongst others.

Svitlana Tsybak, co-founder of Wines of Ukraine, added: “The mission of our team is to promote Ukrainian wines worldwide, present Ukraine as a winemaking country, and tell everywhere and everyone that Ukraine has its place in the winemaking world.

“For the last two decades, Ukrainian wine has experienced a renaissance, and now it is time to show our wines in the UK.  This is one of the most important markets for us, not least because the country supports Ukraine, which we very much appreciate.”

To register for the event click here:  https://shorturl.at/ADE04

Wineries that will be showcased, include:

Beykush Winery, Mykolaiv

Stakhovsky Wines, Zakarpattya

Chateau Chizay, Zakarpattya

Biologist Craft Winery, Kyiv

Vynkhol Oksamytne /TM Villa Tinta, Odesa (Bessarabia subregion)

Kolonist Wine, Odesa (Bessarabia subregion)

Frumushika Nova, Odesa (Bessarabia subregion)

Shabo, Odesa

Tiras Winery /TM My Wine by Eduard Gorodetsky, Odesa

Graevo, Zaporizhzhia

Father’s Wine VB, Ternopil