Beer brewers have long suffered as Americans switched to wine. But since Covid, even winemakers got hit, and 2025 was really bad.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Beer brewers and winemakers in the US are struggling with an existential crisis: A substantial decline in consumption. It hit beer first, because people switched to wines. And then it hit both after the pandemic, when alcohol consumption declined all around.
There are numerous stories about vineyards not being able to sell their grapes, and winemakers not being able to sell their wines, and a slew of them have gone out of business. I described the fate of Vintage Wine Estates, a publicly traded winemaker with 34 widely known brands which filed for bankruptcy in July 2024 and entered out pantheon of Imploded Stocks.
The decline in alcohol consumption isn’t because the tapped-out overindebted always-struggling or whatever American consumer can no longer afford to buy a beer or some wine.
But it’s because older people have become aware of the toxicity of alcohol and what it does to their bodies, and they have cut back, and by a lot, and younger people never really got started in the large numbers that the older generations did at that age. And for the industry, this has turned into a deadly mix.
Wine production in the US plunged by 15.2% in 2025 from the prior year, and by 28% over the past two years, to 554 million gallons of all types of wines (including sparkling wine and hard cider). Since the peak in 2017, wine production has collapsed by 38%:
The data was released today by the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), based on the excise tax filings that winemakers have to file with the Treasury Department.
The number of winemakers in 2025 has dropped by 9% from the prior year, and by 12% from the peak in 2022. The year 2025 was a terrible year in terms of winemakers not being able to hang on any longer:
Beer production fell by 6.2% in 2025 from the prior year, and by 10.2% over the past two years, to 148 million barrels, the lowest in ages (for measuring beer production, 1 barrel = 31 gallons).
Since 2021, beer production has dropped by 18.5%. Since 2012, it has plunged by 24%, according to data from the TBB.
The number of beer brewers – not including the smallest brewers and brew pubs that don’t have to file the excise tax form – has dropped by 9.5% in 2025 to 7,024.
Since the peak in 2022, the number of brewers has dropped by 13.7%.
Very small brewers and brew pubs that are liable for less than $50,000 in excise taxes a year – they would produce less than 14,200 barrels of beer a year – do not have to file the excise tax form TTB F 5130.9, and are therefore not included in this count. There may be about 3,000 of them.
Beer production has long suffered from US consumers switching to wine. At the time, Big Beer was running the show, and Americans lost interest. That trend started decades ago when per-capita beer consumption began to decline.
Then small brewers started brewing delicious beers that caught people’s attention, and so began the craft brew boom that came out of the hide of Big Beer, which was losing market share. So Big Beer started buying many of the bigger craft brewers.
But new craft brewers kept springing up, and it was a dynamic industry, and sales of craft brews boomed, despite a continuous shakeout that wiped out many of the earlier brands that had brewed some great beers but in money-losing operations. By 2012, overall beer consumption started declining, and that decline accelerated since the pandemic, and craft brewers are getting hit too.
America makes some of the best beers and wines in the world, and exports some of them. But other countries too are cutting back on alcohol consumption. And governments encourage it with big sin taxes and with explanations of the health effects of alcohol. As older people are cutting back and younger people are not picking up the habit, the industry – similar to the tobacco industry – faces the prospects of a long decline.
I’m a huge fan of craft brewers and love many of their excellent IPAs. I want them to thrive. But I too have cut back by about 75%. Everyone I know has cut back. I’ve become a terrible customer. I’m down to just four beers a week in most weeks, half a beer per day plus a whole beer on Saturday night when we go out, and that’s where I’ll keep it. It’s enough to enjoy the awesome experience of that first mouthful, but maybe not enough to keep the brewers alive.
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The wine market looks an awful lot like the housing market — prices (of good stuff) haven’t budged. In fact, all the high-ish end and above Italian, French, and Napa are all up.
When these stories started circulating maybe 18 months ago, I hoped to get the things we like for maybe 2018 prices. Nope! At least not yet. Everything we like is probably already supply constrained, so unaffected so far.
Housing market is in secular declining pattern, not sure about Wine market.
Housing market decline is documented by WR in many of his articles.
I’m finding great deals on California wine at Albertsons, Vons(Safeway) and Smart & final. Bottles that usually go for 40-50 can be found for under 20. It’s a shame the industry is struggling, it may be our state’s greatest product at this point:)
Disagree. I’m finding stuff all the time. Sign up for the email list for random wineries in Paso and Napa. I get 50% off random emails as they clear out inventory often.
I am actually pretty sure that alcohol consumption is dropping because the younger generations are more into drugs. In my country at least, I am quite shocked to meet so many young adults that are very much against any kind of alcohol because of health concerns –also tobacco– but have no problem with snorting unknown powders and think smoking weed is healthy.
I do think that the war against alcohol and tobacco was a very bad idea. But, you know, who could have predicted these kind of results?
I looked into the “youth are using more drugs” claims which have been going around for some time on social media, and basically there is no evidence for them. The only thing that might have seen a small increase is anything THC related, as it is now widely available (here in the USA). But the claims of reckless drug abuse among the youth are basically without foundation.
Not attacking anyone here, just wanted to say that I had also heard alarms on social media, and like so much of the crap that gets put out there, it turned out to be false when I looked into it.
wow, just come on over and see all mils on streets at night
it’s were 10-15% now live permenant(druggies R’us)
that age group 30+ to 50+ don’t want to work
think $20 an hour is slave wages(but they want $$ to spend on drugs)
if they work hard and demonstrate skills I bump pay quickly
but refuse to overpay at 1st until they demonstrate otherwise
Well, when you see it with your own eyes you really don’t care about what the internet or “studies” say about it, you know it to be true.
Of course, if you have little to do with the youth, you have no other choice than to “look into it”.
They are indulging in edibles.
Curious how much of the drop is due to less exports? Did countries stop buying US made alcohol to any significant degree?
Exports were never a big part of production. Wine exports accounted for only 3% of total wine production in the US in 2025 (in gallons). Wine exports peaked in 2015 and started dropping along with dropping global consumption of alcohol. In dollars, it might be a little different since I assume that the wines that get exported are mid- to higher end, and not mass-production wines, and in dollars, the share of exports might have been quite a bit bigger.
Ontario’s LCBO is reputed to be one of the largest single purchasers of alcohol in the world, though it is no match for Costco or Tesco.
Until recently it was the largest foreign purchaser of American wine and spirits. Right now it is purchasing none.
As Wolf points out, US exports are in any event rounding error as a total of production. At most it may be pinching some smaller outfits at the margin. Certainly its impact is nowhere near as significant as the ongoing reduction of Canadian tourism to the US.
Not directly related, but the guy at my local store said that the Canadians have drastically reduced their purchases of American Whiskey.
He was just mentioning that certain flavors (in this case Weller) would have increased availability because of this.
I can confirm that, Colorado, and most of the American West is suffering from a decline in tourism. Definitely snow related (regarding the past winter), but last summer was down by maybe 20% overall in CO.
In Canada we’re losing lots of craft brewers, 2 near me in the past month. Their prices are going up because the price of aluminum beer cans has gone through the roof, partly because the US makes the cans and it’s tariffed when it comes across. In some cases tariffed twice. Also with pot now legal and mainstream, young people already have a buzz before they hit the bars where they don’t buy a lot of expensive beer. There’s a point with the price of craft beer where you just stop buying it. Cheers!
“Their prices are going up because the price of aluminum beer cans has gone through the roof…”
This is BS. The cost of the aluminum in a can is less than 2 cents. The costs go up because LABOR costs go up, and because marketing costs, transportation costs, etc. have soared, and because the price of specialty hop and malt may have gone up, and because other operating expenses increased.
If you buy the beer in a store, the brewer only gets a small portion of the price that you pay. The rest gets extracted along the way.
aren’t we seeing around 20 craft brewers month going out of business/bankruptcy
More. In 2025, the number of brewers fell by a net of 744, not including micro brewers and brew pubs that produced less than 14,000 barrels. But there were also some new brewers that started up.
So that’s a net decline of about 62 a month.
My $1.15 with tax, 40 oz refill fountain Coke Zero at RaceTrac has been pretty stable, thank goodness.
No beer / wine / hard stuff for me.
It helps me save more each month.
I live in a college town. If you mention beer a lot of young people will make a “yuk” face and pull out their little container of weed to show you what they prefer. Tastes have changed.
My wife and I are doing our part for the scotch and wine industries. Some sort of alcohol is usually consumed in our household daily.
However, you mention pricing and that Americans COULD pay, if they so wanted. I’m not so sure. Even crap bottles are up $3 from where they were 5-6 years ago. If you’re a lower-end consumer, that $7 Josh Cellars from 2019 now has a $10 psychological discretionary spend barrier. If budgets are tight, maybe you forgo that bottle or two… or three. Good, standard, everyday bottles that could be had for $14 before are $20+ now. More expensive bottles have just gone to straight-up price gouging. Caymus for instance is just flat-out ripping people off for what it is, even at Costco. I laugh everytime I see whatever price it has raised itself to when I walk by in the aisle. Unfortunately, my parents got duped into buying it a couple times because “for that price, it must be good”-mentality.
I digress, but the point is, I believe some “paper napkin math” psychological barriers have been touched on with current pricing. Plus, the quality that’s out there at approachable price levels for most consumers is utter trash right now. I personally believe that’s part of the reason proseccos, moscatos, and the like, along with rosés (barf!) and rieslings, etc., have become so popular lately is because they have so much residual sugar that they mask any nuances, especially at low price levels, and all taste like a Millennial midlife crisis. I’m 40, so I can judge freely.
None of the alcohol companies have given up any of the prices increases that they slapped on during COVID and subsequent inflation years, so I don’t have a lot of sympathy now that there is a supply glut but they’re — apparently — unwilling to move product by discounting bottles.
… And don’t even get me started on scotch pricing over the last 10 years. The little island of Islay has me bent over barrel, figuratively (and occasionally, literally).
you can get nice white wines for $6 a bottle, including Costco’s house brand Pino Grigio (Kirkland). Safeway has several good table wines in that range, after loyalty discount, sixpack discount, and the on-sale price. Lots of good deals to be had in the wine aisle in the $10-$20 range. You need to get out more often.
And Americans are loaded. the median income of married couples is $120,000 in the US, and much higher in places like California ($138,000). 65% of Americans own their own home, and those have soared, and 60% own some stocks, and they have soared, and others own cryptos and PMs. I’m sick and tired of this BS about American being poor and cannot afford basic things. 20% are in that category, and 15% are poor. So don’t pretend that everyone lives below poverty level. And even poor people drink a beer or a glass of wine every now and then, or more often.
Thanks, Wolf, but I get out plenty. Kirkland used to be good value. The latest vintages have been crap. The wife is the white wine drinker, mostly Chardonnay.
I am not saying the American consumer is poor. I am saying there may be inflation-induced psychological reasons why people are buying less alcohol, when taken in combination with GLP-1 drugs, competing recreational drug use, diet/healthy living lifestyles, what have you.
If you’re already on the fence about drinking due to other factors, and that $14 bottle you liked 6 years ago is $20, it’s a much easier decision to skip putting it in the basket.
I used to like going to the movie theater, and still do, but the pricing has gotten outrageous. It’s not that I can’t afford it as a consumer — the activity just doesn’t deliver the same value anymore. I just wonder if some similar is happening with alcohol, in addition to the other factors you listed in your article.
Keep fighting the good fight.
We’re drowning in wine in California. And there are deals everywhere. You live on the other side of the country and might not fully feel it. Wine Country here has a huge problem. They don’t know what to do with all this wine and the grapes. Some are ripping out their grapevines and replacing them with fruit trees.
“Lots of good deals to be had in the wine aisle in the $10-$20 range.” Good deals on ok-ish wine, yes. The mere fact you mentioned Pinot Grigio at all tells me you should stick to beer. :-)
Agreed, Kirkland *for the money* punches above its weight. They briefly had a Brunello, maybe $30, that competed with $60+. Their Barolo has about the same $ to quality, and their champagne, although not everyone’s style, certainly beats all others at $25.
I ❤️ wine snobs
And my wife is drinking wine, including the Pino Grigio. I’m drinking IPAs. Any decent IPA is multiple times better than the best wine ever. Wines just cannot measure up. They’re just an inferior product compared to an IPA. A good IPA starts out with a complex deep fruitiness amid gentle bubbles that then slowly dissolve into rich hoppy bitterness that lingers for a long time in your mouth. The first mouthful can leave you stunned with pleasure. But IPAs are an acquired taste. The intense flavors can blow people’s socks off.
@ Wolf, I IPA snobs! I wish I could be one, it would be so much cheaper!
Both IPA and wine are acquired tastes. The wife and I have observed guest drinking choices during various social events at our house. Even the totally unknowing types have a very strong bias toward more expensive stuff, within a given category. $50+ beats <$30 every time, and <$20 will be practically untouched until last. Sometimes we'll sneak in a $70+ with the hopes only she and I will drink it, but inevitably one of the others will sample and "ohhhhhhh, I like thiiiiiiiis one."
There's a price/utility curve for sure, it's just hard to tell where it really flattens out. I can tell you much snobbier friends' $150+ white burgundies are really good but not enough better to pry the extra +$110 from my hands. They, in turn, say the same thing about their friend's $300+ burgundies.
Wolf – What’s your IPA of choice?
Hard to beat Stone’s Delicious Citrus. Locally (Magnolia, N of Houston) we have a lighter one for spring drinking by Lone Pint called Little Rose, lower alcohol but big taste. It’s good for drinking after mowing the yard.
I love lots of IPAs. I love going to new places to try their IPAs. Every time I travel anywhere, I try out the local brews. It’s surprising how good many are, even in smallish towns. We went to Sedona, AZ in December, 3 nights: 1 dinner was red-wine night, the other 2 dinners were IPA nights, two different IPAs from that part of AZ. Delicious. I don’t even try to remember them all.
Yeah, my general experience is that wine has gone down in price for the same quality. You can get quite decent reds and whites for not much money now. Personally I think that thanks to the wine boom in America we saw a gradual rise in quality and lowering of price. But you can get relatively good and inexpensive imports today as well.
But I have also cut back.
Cost has never equated to quality with wine, only to those that like to impress others. Recently, the #1 wine of the year by Wine Spectator was less than $10/a bottle and available at Walmart. I cleared them out!
@Russell, you’re misinterpreting their rankings. They take price into account, and whatever wine you’re referring to may have been their top value for money. You can look at their top 100 for 2025, and while there are definitely some awesome bargains, they are far from the top of the ratings.
Unfortunately, cost has always been highly correlated with (subjective) quality.
Gattopardo – Sorry, but I have had the opposite experience with blind taste tests fooling many high-browed friends and laughing at them afterwards. It’d be interesting to see how you would do.
You are somewhat correct with the Wine Spectator ratings. They do take into account value, but all wines rated are 90+ so all are really good bottles regardless.
BTW – My everyday bourbon is Redemption High Rye with a rating of 96 for $18.99 at Total Wine and More. Hard to beat regardless of the price. I drink it with one ball of ice.
The Kirkland brand of SBlanc is $6.99 here in ATL, and that’s all the way from Australia, I think.
Been there done that SMS:
Always a fan of locally brewed beers and will continue so;;; how some ever, after becoming clearly allergic to my fave wines, I have turned to tequila, and will continue to enjoy all of it’s clear benefits…
IMVHO (as one who passed ALL the ”hard science” courses at UCLA and CAL, sometimes leading the ”curve” ,,, the current ”hoopla” about the dangers of alcohol are way over blown, and again IMVHO, thousands of years of history support the idea that AL helps reduce pain and, in moderation far damn shore, helps with the ”social” aspect for some folx…
Bottom line: Know your healthy limit(s),,, and don’t go anywhere where you are encouraged or convinced to go beyond YOUR limit.
Good Luck and God Bless ALL on WS!
I agree with the psychological barrier. One of our favorite local restaurants does wine by the glass. The food is outstanding and reasonable in price (for California.) The wine starts at $18 a glass (before tip and tax) and is mediocre. Every so often we get tempted to order it, look at the list and then one of us says “we need to get back to Spain” (where excellent wine sells for 5 euros a glass and decent wine is 3 euros a glass) and the other of us says “yeah, the California wines make me too puffy anyhow” and the conversation on why we rarely drink continues. Eventually we go home and split a gummy.
We can certainly afford $18 (plus tax and tip,)
but we feel put off by it and subsequently start piling on all the rest of the reasons that we’d rather abstain.
Plastic bottle Canadian Mist or Seagrams VO is almost $20 now. There is a market for cheap alcohol. But I believe youre right in that the new generation is consuming less in terms of absolute volume.
A lot of it has to do with stigma.
The thing is, if you actually look at these studies, like the one in the Lancet
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(18)31310-2/fulltext
which concludes:
The level of alcohol consumption that minimised harm across health outcomes was zero (95% UI 0·0–0·8) standard drinks per week.
a couple things become apparent:
For men, of which I am most certainly one regardless of legal proclamation, one or two standard drink a day (in their super clinal description) slightly increases the risk of lip and oral cancer and tuberculosis and slightly decreases the risk of ischaemic heart disease and diabetes.
Maybe I’m crazy, but where I live in the very suburban USA, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone contracting tuberculosis.
This doesn’t mean I disagree with good habits, like smoking anything is probably a bad idea, as is eating Hot Pockets or other things impossible to synthesize in the kitchen.
My point is the study may be accurate in context, but not necessarily 100% accurate for people in the USA.
A different problem is drunk guys driving into things, but that’s a different risk with a possible solution, e.g. FSD or cybercabs!
I swear these things are driven by the puritans (Somewhere, somebody is having fun, and we will have none of that!), or maybe Bill and Melinda :D (per the Lancet study!)
Forsake demon Rum and that Devil in disguise; Bacchus. Embrace the fruit of Weedus; the flower of cannabis.
Remember, wut booze you lose.
Spirits have been getting nailed as well. Diageo is a large alcohol conglomerate; their stock is down big (60%) and still dropping.
I drink straight spirits almost exclusively.
During the Pandemic, prices of good whiskey/scotch absolutely exploded and certain bottles were impossible to find. Not only can you now find stuff on shelves, but prices are starting to outright deflate. It’s been pretty remarkable to see the turnaround.
I only drink rainwater and pure grain alcohol.
I’m a millennial and I find that a lot of my generation is just deciding to cut back or quit drinking. Grabbing a drink or two costs a similar amount to an entree at a restaurant these days. People are also just more socially isolated too (personally I think screens play a huge role). Rather spend my free time out running, hiking, yoga, etc. than drinking at a bar. I’d imagine this is even more prevalent in Gen Z.
Same age, and it’s good news to me that people are drinking less. The “party phase” that was trained into us just made everyone extremely lame. Just binge drink every weekend, nobody can even remember what happened the night before, spending all your money on alcohol etc. I never drank but I spent too much time dragging bodies around, which wasn’t fun, especially when they’re covered in vomit. We’d have to throw them in the shower or out in the lawn. Not really what I wanted to be doing with my friends every week.
I have no affiliation with them, but f you want killer deals on wine, try Grocery Warehouse.
California Sober –
Weed crazy America –
Legal weed killing the booze industry.
THC drinks hitting the shelves in bars.
Absolutely true in California,
I live with chronic pain and refuse to use opiates.
I go to My local dispensary and by indica edibles.
The dispensary is full of the younger generation buying up edibles and tch cartridges for their electric pipes.
I’ve practiced “Las Vegas sobriety” for the last 20 years of so. My only formal exclusion is alcohol. Can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone else, but it has worked wonders for me.
That said, since fentanyl (2010 or so?) I’ve avoided hard drugs that I didn’t buy directly from a farmacia.
My remaining family members and I alike have either eliminated alcohol from our diets or have steeply reduced it. Once you get it through your head that alcohol is pure poison, you stop desiring it. My sister and I are both aging Boomers with health issues that make alcohol consumption doubly hazardous for us- in my case, I want no recurrence of the breast cancer I was successfully treated for, and my hormone blocker is rendered less effective by alcohol. My sister has other serious health issues, and so do younger relatives, who’ve all been advised to quit alcohol. In any case, I hate being hung over and though I miss wine with my meals, I feel far better without it and found it much easier to shed excess weight. Health conscious younger people are rejecting it completely and they mostly are not replacing it with MJ and street drugs. I expect that in another couple of decades, alcohol will be as unfashionable as tobacco use has become.
>I expect that in another couple of decades, alcohol will be as unfashionable as tobacco use has become.
Yes I expect this too. Seems like it was just a long, slow burn as smoking went from being a vaguely sociable activity to becoming limited to ever smaller remnants of people in ever more limited and depressing spaces.
“smaller remnants of people in ever more limited and depressing spaces.”
I grow me own tobacco and have a rolled smoke with a.m. coffee on the deck,in last week have seen a eagle/pilliated woodpecker/couple of small red tail hawks ,far from depressing!
I enjoy Red Stripe beer and some times add a shroom to the mix.
I share your observations. As a millennial, a lot of people in my generation watched lives and family get destroyed by alcohol. I don’t know if this is a statistically significant portion of the population or just my personal experience, but the general attitude around alcohol has changed greatly. 20 years ago, I got treated like a evildoer for not being a drinker. Today, it is socially acceptable and not something that bothers people at all.
I’m a boomer and back in the middle ages I remember parent’s parties with spirits flowing like water. Then everyone got in their cars and drove home. We did the same in the 70’s and 80’s.
Besides the health issues, most people I know today seem to have gotten the memo about drinking and driving. At many gatherings people are drinking one or two at most.
Youngest people aside, binging almost seems a thing if the past.
Mitch,also see the uber ect. cutting down on folks driving wasted.
My solution for concerts(love tpo party then) is a friend gets a free ticket to show and is sober driver,we get back home we both drink and he crashes on couch for the night
I think the drop in consumption is directly related to the huge increase in people taking GLP-1 drugs for weight loss. I have several friends on these drugs and every one now barely ever drinks. They claim they no longer have a desire to. In fact GLP-1 drugs are being researched for dealing with alcoholism. As usage increases the headwind becomes more massive. Long term not a place to invest.
I would say alcohol is the first thing to go when budgets tighten. Plus all of the reasons mentioned above. I started getting hives after drinking wine, so yeah now I’m not drinking it. I had a bottle of 2021 Duckhorn Merlot and it was wonderful – subsequent years of the same were not even close to the divine velvety taste of that bottle. Eberle has some good wines, my family out there ships a case or two before they come visit in Ohio.
When I first made an extended visit to the US the beer was bloody awful. So I’m sad that your new(ish) good beer should be facing such a storm.
In England I never drink in a pub nowadays because they’ve completely lost the habit of serving bitter at cellar temperature – i.e cool – and instead serve it at room temperature in a room that usually is well-heated – yuck. No wonder people swapped to lagers which are served refrigerated. And now it’s all in decline, partly because of public taste, partly because of government policies.
I don’t drink red wine any more because of a medication I take but I confess that I never liked US reds – too sweet for my taste. I did enjoy Aussie, South African, and Argentinian though.
So now our drinking is reduced to (i) an occasional Belgian wheat beer – luvly (ii) zero-alcohol beer – much improved in the last couple of decades (ii) a gin-and-tonic a couple of times a week, (iii) a glass of malt whenever we eat haggis, and (iv) a small glass of dry white wine – often from NZ – with, for instance, fondue or fish.
Oh, and an oddity worth reporting – you can now buy pretty good English white wine. It’s a bit expensive for its quality but it’s decent stuff. We tend to buy some when it’s on offer.
I used to be a daily drinker, but at 64 have steeply cut back alcohol consumption. I simply find that I can’t “hold my liquor” like I used to, and don’t enjoy the experience as much. I have 3 kids, and none drink anything more than a glass of wine at social events. It’s all for the better.
Ditto here. Daily drinker starting in mid 30s until late 40s then, wham, couldn’t handle the booze any more, maybe metabolism change. Eliminated all the hard stuff, and now a glass of wine or yummy IPA maybe three times a week, a bit more when on vacation.
I too am an IPA connoisseur — one of the greatest culinary treats created. That is, except for home-made hard cider. My favorite and easy to brew at home. And pear cider even better. I brew about 12 gallons a year and I could easily make more if I so desired. I
I suspect though that I am increasingly an outlier. Our local home-brewing wine and beer supplier closed a couple years ago, as did the one in the neighboring town. But not much special equipment is needed and it is easy and cheap. And better than boughen!
The Baby Boomers aging out as comsumers crushed Harley Davison and other motorcycle Cos. a little earlier than the adult beverage makers. It should have been obvious what was coming.
It’s funny because you see a story like this and you think maybe we should not be afraid of alcohol.
“Supercentenarian Mark Behrends, who recently celebrated his 110th birthday, claims his daily alcohol consumption is what’s keeping him going, Omaha.com reports”.
Or a study from the University of Texas at Austin says this:
“Background: Growing epidemiological evidence indicates that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with reduced total mortality among middle-aged and older adults”.
I also had relatives who drank like fish and lived into their late 80s.
Personally, moderation in everything may be the best??
I’m a firm believer that as long as you have at least some modicum of healthiness in your life, the genes you’ve been dealt will get you long before most lifestyle choices (within reason) and like you stated, a certain amount of moderation.
I’m doing my part as well. My “diet” (Eat to Beat) requires I drink at least one beer or glass of red wine daily. However, my beer sometimes looks a lot like bourbon. :)
When you’re choosing between paying your car / house note or pounding brewski’s / sipping wine, a reasonable person makes the obvious choice. No surprise here.
It crossed my mind that, since these results are based on tax records, as things get very tight, tax avoidance could start taking place as companies struggle to keep the lights on. Or as in the beer example, they retreat and start falling under the threshold for reporting. That could be a contributor to the increased steepness of the fall.
Nonsense.
Your #1 sentence = tax fraud NOT “tax avoidance.” You can spend quality time in the hoosegow for that.
Your #2 sentence: If a brewery is set up to produce 100,000 barrels per year or 1,000,000 barrels per year, it will shut down long before production falls below the 14,200-barrel threshold. No company can survive that kind of collapse in revenues. Which is why so many brewers shut down last year. If production falls from 20,000 barrels (tax form) to 14,000 barrels, that’s a 30% plunge in revenues; a brewer might survive or might not. If they survive it, then that 20,000 barrels would come out of the production total of 148 MILLION barrels, and wouldn’t even be a rounding error.
Lots of good points made here. However one issue not mentioned is demographics: there’s simply less people in the demographic that consumes an outsized proportion of alcohol. This is no different from the struggles the breakfast food industry has experienced over the past two decades. In addition, beer and wine are not the preferred drink of many immigrant groups. From my experience, Eastern Europeans prefer vodka, Chinese prefer Baijiu—a less pure form of paint thinner 😉.
You’re trafficking in outdated silly stereotypes of immigrants and descendants of immigrants.
Whats the markup on a pint of beer?
10 x?
Beer went from $3.50 to 7.50 in about a year
and how about ball park prices?
I always hoped there would be a buyers strike at ball parks
Guardian UK:
Dec 25
People in Britain are drinking less alcohol than in previous years, according to reports.
The average UK adult consumed 10.2 alcoholic drinks a week last year, the lowest figure since data collection began in 1990 and a decline of more than a quarter from the peak of 14 two decades ago, according to figures published in the FT from research company IWSR.
This is more global than US.
I am also an IPA lover that has cut way back but the one ray of hope is that some of the craft brewers are figuring out how to make a decent 0.5% IPA and this allows me a small amount of indulgence. Strange Fellows Brewing up here in Canada is making a pretty decent IPA called Nevertheless.
Maybe the 0.5’s will help save some of the craft brewers
Yes, Athletic has a growing variety of “NA” (0.5%) beers including a couple IPAs. The NA beverage market seemed to explode (somewhat starting with energy drinks over a decade ago), and now there’s a growing variety of “healthy” alternatives to alcohol.
I haven’t tried any of the various “hop waters” or similar, but they’re out there!
The craft beer market has needed a correction for a long time. It has become awash with brewers that want to produce XYZ IPA and will not produce anything original. I stopped going to craft breweries years ago because of this.
My dad was a wine experts. Chevel Blanch 1955 that kind of thing. Nothing today tastes like that. Not even some of the old bottles I still have, too old. As for beer, lots of nice tasting ones around.
I remember reading an article a number of years ago about a 100 year old man that ran the marathon in England, by far older than anyone up to that time. He did not have any good answers about his longevity, but did say that most every day he routinely did have his one fag and a pint.
It’s funny how there are never any reporters asking all the gazillions of people who died of a relatively young age what they did to die of such young age. It’s only the old ones who are still alive that are being asked.
So I looked that up and found that it was Fauja Singh, an Indian-born Sikh, a farmer from Punjab, who then moved to the UK. He is an extraordinary runner. I watched a brief video clip when he at 101 was running that marathon. No one else has completed a marathon at 100. Amazing!
But, but, but… for Sikhs, alcohol consumption is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.
You people break me up with your BS 🤣
My old man is 100 and still takes a shot once in a while. He holds 2nd place in the world in the 400 meters for those over 80.
No reason to not enjoy “a shot once in a while.” Good for him. But that’s likely not the reason he is fit and can still run at his age. You don’t get that way by drinking. You get that way by working out all your life and by not giving up when you get old, even if everything always hurts.
Lots of interesting stats on the 2025 Gallop poll:
Declines in alcohol consumption do not appear to be caused by people shifting to other mood-altering substances — in particular, recreational marijuana, which is now legal in about half of U.S. states. Although marijuana use is higher today than a decade ago, it has been fairly steady over the past four years and thus doesn’t appear to be a factor in people choosing not to drink alcohol.
Also, the graph indicates that liquor consumption has gone up to match wine consumption on the way down.
U.S. drinkers continue to cite beer as the alcoholic beverage they consume most often, exceeding the 30% who name liquor and 29% who name wine. This is broadly consistent with the patterns seen over the past six years, when liquor has roughly matched wine as people’s drink of choice.
Consumer behavior surveys of what consumers say they do are meaningless.
The peak in distilled spirits of “taxable production” — which is for US consumption, as exports are not taxed — was in 2018 and has since then dropped by 12%. That’s why I like hard date instead of consumer behavior surveys. Consumers say whatever.
Bunch of whiners here. Winers are more fun. Poison?! haha, fermenting is as natural as the birds and bees.
A little hard cider, wine or German bier is good for the body and mind. Carol and enjoy late afternoons on our patio, birdwatching and savoring a delicious, refreshing alcoholic beverage with expansive and compassionate conversation.
Another example of the effects that the “ baby boomer “ generation has upon economic trends .
It is expected that >7000 are dying each day and that an increasing number are being institutionalized every day ,
I used to love my Friday after work meet up at the pub with ‘the boys’. Had our own big table and knew everyone there. Noise, music, laughter. Then, pubs started closing….friends aged and everyone just moved on. Some still go on Fridays, but not as many. Or, our Friday Night At The Office which meant a bunch of us pilots doing the same drill after work with some take out then getting a ride home. It was wonderful. Good laughs.
Here is the ultimate non drinker rub. I have my own bloody pub at home, converted an old machine shop into a post and beam yellow cedar pub about 20 years ago. Slate pool table, sink, stereo, big windows….all just 15′ from the river to look out at. Glass door wood stove. It is located off my wood shop. Now, wife and I shoot pool when the weather is crap, maybe have tea. Listen to music. I did leave the “Men’s Entrance” sign on the main door. (Canadian pub thing from the long ago past). I put the Ladies and Escorts sign on the woodshed. Sure miss having a good zinfandel when cooking supper, though. Different times, now. I use the big table for making lures and tying flys.
My logger buddy described why he finally quit drinking. His words, “In camp, we would sit around with our beer and screw every woman in town. In town we would sit around drinking beer and log every tree on the coast”. Inevitable change with age, imho.
The up and coming generation is smarter than ever. They want to meet people in person, go to bed at 10 and they drink smoothies. We should have been so lucky.
Their main problem its the sinking titanic that is the USS America.
Thanks WR for this article.
I am not smart but could nver understand the big allure of alcoholic drinks though I indulge in couple of drinks a year.
My neighbors own a winery in Lodi. They saw this coming decades ago and of course recessions hurt when they happen because people will buy a few glasses of wine at a restaurant rather than the entire and the first two glasses tend to pay for the bottle. They tried to get into China but extreme tariffs hurt so other countries mostly supply that market. They did make solid money, although not enough to sustain, through services such as when rabbis need to come in and ensure wine is kosher.
I stick with Negra Modelo and edibles these days as wine, especially red no longer has any appeal, very contrary to my younger days.
Never fear, we Irish will step up to the plate and save as many as we can!
I used to drink lots of IPAs spending thousands at bars, but after 40 I drink less and less each year. It adversely affects my sleep. My friends who still consume beer and alcohol in general chide me saying I’ve lost weight, but it’s all relative as they get bigger and bigger.
As for younger generations, the social aspect of drinking may not be as important as previous generations. Maybe it’s a combination of the pandemic and social media. For me, happy hour was a way to unwind and meet interesting people. That’s actually the one thing I miss about drinking.
Here in Mexico they tax wine as a luxury product (40% vs the usual 16% for other alcohol). So decent wine is really expensive! So it’s a small market to begin with. But good food is so much more enjoyable with a good glass of wine. Everything in moderation I say.
I went to work in a lumber mill in 1970 at $2.50 per hour. That would buy me ten 12-ounce “schooners” at any local tavern. I doubt that mill worker wages have kept up with beer price inflation.
I like many have commented, can’t drink like I used to. I maybe drink 2-3 good IPA’s a week. As much as I like beer, I just hate hangovers.
I guess the average age of Wolfstreet reader is must fall somewhere between 45-55.
The definition of poor in America is vastly different than in the world. low income as per census bureau do not consider SNAP, housing assistance, child tax credit, earned income credit, Medicaid etc.
Many members Gen Z are grimly determined to maintain self control. For instance, the rate of coitus, has declined significantly.
Letting go, whether with alcohol or weed, is looked down upon by a increasing number of young people with a driven mania to succeed in life.. Even fun is to approached with a desperate desire to achieve self-betterment in all endeavors
They are, of course, destined to face a brutal disappointment when reality comes a callin’.