Gen Z’s drinking habits say a lot about a changing wine industry, but even more about the youngest generation of drinkers.
A few years ago, ordering an orange wine said as much about you as it did your taste in wine. It suggested you knew where the good bars were, preferred listening bars to basement clubs, and owned at least one Artemide Nessino lamp. Now you can hardly call orange wine niche. It’s no longer confined to London‘s natural wine bars or Brooklyn bottle shops; you can pick up a bottle in your local supermarket, or order a glass in cafés well beyond the usual creative enclaves.
But for Gen Z drinkers, orange wine introduced a generation of purported teetotallers to a broader world of wines that sit outside traditional markers of prestige. Now it’s chilled reds, pét-nats, blouge, and ciders made using methods that feel experimental that are the bottles du jour.
According to Ocado, searches for chilled red wine have increased by 1,020 percent year-on-year, with younger shoppers driving much of the interest. Meanwhile, Gen Z’s relationship with wine appears to be evolving. The Wine Market Council’s 2025 U.S. Wine Consumer Benchmark Segmentation Survey found that the generation’s share of wine drinkers increased from 9 percent to 14 percent over the past two years.
The irony is that many of these so-called alternative wines are among the oldest styles in existence. Orange wine has been produced for thousands of years, particularly in Georgia, using ancient skin-contact techniques. Pét-nat predates Champagne. Chilled reds are less a new invention than a rediscovery of lighter, fresher wines that have long existed outside the traditional hierarchy of wine.
In many ways, Gen Z is simply becoming a new generation of traditional wine drinkers. “For younger consumers, these aren’t really ‘alternative’ wine styles at all,” says Laura Hastings of Ancestral Wines and Trellis wholesalers – which supplies the likes of Oranj, Leo’s, and the Dreamery, among many other London bars that find themselves on curated Instagram lists. “They come from long-standing local traditions and are simply coming back into fashion.”
As wine editor (and Gen Z herself) Eloise Feilden explains, part of the appeal is that these bottles feel less intimidating than the traditional world of wine. “In the UK in particular, we sometimes see wine as a bit of an elitist club, one which requires a certain level of knowledge to enter,” she says. “Alternative, funky styles from young winemakers who aren’t afraid to rip up the fusty old rule book feel more accessible.”
That accessibility is not just about taste. Wine has always functioned as a form of social currency, but where previous generations demonstrated their wine credentials through famous appellations, classified growths or revered vintages, thanks in part to social media, status symbols are often the bottles that look as though nobody else has discovered them yet.
«That online existence is also reflected in what they choose to buy and post about,» says Hastings. «They want to express their individuality and an aspirational lifestyle. They’re looking for products that feel different, have a story behind them and are often made on a much smaller, more artisanal scale rather than at an industrial level of production.» The bottle itself has become part of the post. Much like fashion, furniture or restaurants, the wine on the table communicates where someone spends their time, what they value and the communities they see themselves belonging to.
The cultural meme account Socks House Meeting has built an audience around precisely these stereotypes. In its world, orange wine belongs to «graphic designers living in Dalston or Brooklyn» wearing five-panel caps, Birkenstock Bostons, and enough silver rings to stock a jeweler’s boutique. It’s knowingly exaggerated, but like all good internet caricatures, it only works because it feels vaguely true.
“Five years ago, [orange wine] was pretty much only in London and New York and it’d be a ‘trendy’ thing to do,” says the anomalous cultural commentator. “Now you can get orange wine in a café in Bolton.” (And if you don’t know where Bolton is, that only reinforces their point.) That normalization is perhaps the clearest sign that these wines have moved beyond their original niche. What was once a marker of insider knowledge has become part of the mainstream drinking landscape.
Chilled reds, meanwhile, have their own appeal. “They’re usually cold and taste less ‘heady’ and rich in flavour,” says Socks House Meeting. “So they’re probably easier to knock back than really heavy-bodied, warm, tart or musky reds.”
That shift speaks to a wider change in drinking habits. Gen Z is not only choosing between a red and a white; the selection of cocktails, ready-to-drink cans, beer, and alcohol-free alternatives has never been broader. According to NielsenIQ’s Generations on Tap report, Gen Z accounts for just nine percent of wine-buying households, with purchases tending to be more deliberate than habitual. The challenge for the wine industry is therefore not simply convincing younger consumers to drink wine, but it “needs to compete with the rest of the drinks menu, not just the other bottles on the wine list,” says Feilden.
Social media has accelerated that discovery process, but it has not created the desire itself. Younger drinkers are drawn to wines with personality, bottles made on a smaller scale, with easy-to-digest stories of their place and production. So the future of wine may not belong solely to the bottles with the longest histories or highest prices, but to those that offer a sense of discovery.
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