On a balmy late summer night, Frog, a natural wine bar in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was a busy place. Couples occupied the small tables lining one wall and the pool table was hopping. A bartender poured tastes of a red wine from Andrea Calek, a vigneron in the Ardèche region of France, to two women who were deciding what to order. In the big back yard, the picnic tables were packed. A happy buzz drifted upward into the night sky.
The crowd was made up almost entirely of people in their 20s and 30s, the millennials and Gen Z-ers whom the wine industry complains have turned their backs on wine. Yet nearly all of them were drinking wine. Natural wine.
Over the last couple of years, as I’ve traveled around North America and Europe, I’ve tried to keep my eyes on what young adults were drinking. Almost everywhere I’ve been, the sorts of restaurants and wine bars like Frog that attract a younger clientele are filled with people who are drinking natural wine.
At the same time, the entire wine industry has suffered. Sales post-pandemic are down while health concerns over alcoholic beverages have caused people to question their habits. Alongside, and perhaps inevitably, people have wondered if wine is no longer cool among young people.
My impressionistic response, bolstered by conversations with natural wine importers, retailers and restaurateurs, is that large segments of the wine market are in fact uncool. But natural wine is not one of them.
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