Alcohol is just in a structural decline. From my experiences in Switzerland:
1. 10-15 years ago it was expected you would have 1-2 glasses of wine at lunch as a front office guy / banker while talking shop. Now you will get a trip to HR unless meeting a client or in a place that still allows it. I imagine similar things in other areas. I still see construction workers drinking a can at 6:30pm however.
2. For good reason, "we were both drunk and X happened" doesn't work as an explanation anymore. Turns out that was a big a part of it.
The only real place people are still "expected" to drink is the army (cos there is nothing else to do) or meeting some boomer client. Younger people just do other drugs/stimulants.
Same observation from Finland. Additionally, being even slightly drunk in front of children has become very no-no. I recently had a small gathering of other families with children at my home and I made the mistake of offering them some beers. Everyone declined and the looks I got were the same as if I had offered them crack cocaine.
I don't think it's all good, though, since a lot of social events that were previously facilitated by alcohol just disappear. Like who the fuck actually enjoys acquantainces' children's birthdays without a beer or two? Turns out people suck at socialising without alcohol, and if alcohol disappears, people just stay at home and play video games or something.
This is going to sound like I'm over generalizing and maybe even a bit... racist? and I already apologize for it, it's not my intention. I hope I can pass the actual message I'm trying to pass. So, let's go.
Doesn't Finland, like the other Nordic countries, have a long history of alcohol abuse and pushing against it (like, with draconian prices)? Isn't maybe just that policy "winning"? Also, couldn't this be yet another case where the Nordic are seen as "one step beyond" the rest like it was the case when fully digitalizing schools, only then to backpedal realizing it's not all so good and there are drawbacks that were not considered?
I say this to connect with the second part of your post, to which I fully agree: alcohol is not generally good for health and it can be abused but also small quantities here and there won't probably hurt you in a serious way and will give some social benefits like the ones you mentioned. (and the same applied to other light drugs as well!)
I'd say that here in Finland, the decline in alcohol use has more to do with global trends, especially with the younger generations. The problem though is that there has not been any replacement for the social lubrication required here for people to attempt to be social. Purely based on my own experiences, people are less social, go out less, and therefore use less alcohol.
Feels as if the death of religion is followed by the death of bars, restaurants and other places to go out to in the evening, especially after Covid, leaving even fewer places to meet people.
It's true that people up here tend to get very drunk collectively as the evening drags on, which has always bothered me as somebody who doesn't drink alcohol... First everybody's very dry and awkward, then it's fun for an hour or so, and then things start getting over the top and pretty mental. Compared with central Europe, people don't slow down a few glasses in.
But all that is changing as it seems many people just stopped going out at all. So people might drink less alcohol, but I'm not sure that indicates an improvement of mental health or social coherence. The internet is making people lonelier.
From my anecdotal experience in Sweden, I suspect it might have a lot to do with the lasting economic situation since Covid. People do not seem to be able to afford going out or having people over like they used to.
Prices have increased a lot, making the margins even harder to survive on for the majority.
Is it literally hard to survive? Even with a job and statistically nobody having children and a sparsely populated small country? Perhaps it is better to just not have a job and live on government welfare.
If that is unsustainable for the country then eventually something might change. Until then you have to play the hand you're dealt.
> Doesn't Finland, like the other Nordic countries, have a long history of alcohol abuse and pushing against it (like, with draconian prices)? Isn't maybe just that policy "winning"?
Yes and no; all the Nordic / Lutheran countries have some mildly prohibitionist policies like the Norwegian wine monopoly, and yes it gets very dark and depressing up there which led to alcohol abuse becoming a social problem in the early 20th century, but that situation was stable for years and the decline in alcohol consumption is a global phenomenon.
While the origins may be religious, I'd say the high taxes on alcohol and most alcoholic beverages only being available in state-run shops (Systembolaget/Vinmonopolet/Alko/Vínbúðin) is by now a 100% Nordic phenomenon.
The most interesting situation is actually in Iceland: full prohibition introduced 1915, wine legalized 1922, all other beverages legalized 1935 except for (of all things) beer with more than 2.25% ABV, which had to wait until 1 March 1989 (since then celebrated as "Beer Day") - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Iceland
Alcoholism was a huge problem if you go back several 100 of years where home distillation was rampant, and there is indeed regulation and taxes to control it in Denmark. You can ask an LLM for more details. It's just not done the way say Sweden does it.
Finland's alcoholism-curbing policies date from the early twentieth century and the kind of abuse they were meant to curb was especially the drinking of spirits. Then, nothing changed for decades until, quite recently, beer sales have actually become more liberalized and you can buy higher-strength stuff in supermarkets.
Finland definitely has a history of binge drinking and straight up alcoholism. However, I don't think the state can take credit for consumption going down, since the decline in drinking among younger generations seems pretty much global at this point.
Exactly, the younger generations just stay at home, on the internet. So social drinking has mostly disappeared. Those that really want to get totally drunk probably still do though.
My impression is that decline can mostly be attributed to gen Z. They grew up with social media that made a better point to emphasis how dangerous alcohol is. Previous dominant media, at most, had very sterile disclaimers that alcohol is bad for you.
Romania has seen a similar decline in consumption (though still in top 3 across EU in consumption), such as that nowadays we have articles from media outlets (as a voice for the industry) that complain of the downward trend. While in reality we should be celebrating this change in culture!
In the US Gen Z doesn't drink because of social isolation. Drinking was always a social thing and drinking alone has a stigma associated with it. Also, THC use has become much more socially acceptable and that has replaced a lot of alcohol use.
Gen Z still parties and socializes, but their parties are constantly recorded and posted on social media. There's much higher stakes to getting wasted and making a fool out of yourself in the panopticon.
It is a generational thing, but IMO you've got the wrong root cause. Discussion of the dangers of drinking stems from people choosing not to drink, and people are choosing not to drink because they are attending the kinds of social gatherings that are lubricated by alcohol less.
As such, I'm hesitant to point to the decline in alcohol sales as a public health win. If people were drinking less simply because they were choosing to drink less, that's probably a public health win. If people are drinking less because their social lives have evaporated, that's probably really bad.
Your factors are real, but I think both elements are at play. I admit I could be biased as I see gen Z as more disciplined, locked in, from gyms to lifestyle.
Socialisation, or lack thereof, is a great problem for many people and newer generations raised "online", when you get for free at home endless social media distraction.
But even the 20 year olds I've met in bars were likely to stop drinking way sooner than us milenials, which still get plastered, at least on special occasions.
the article also explicitly called out that boomers aging out of the market is a driving factor.
its easy to forget just how freakishly large that cohort is and how they are all steeped in alcohol as the primary way to an altered state.
As they get too old to drink for various health reasons it makes sense that california wine especially would take the hit because boomers also have all the money so they are the ones buying fancy wine.
the younger gens not backfilling the demand contributes but it was never going to be at boomer levels anyway.
Get ready for a lot more stories like this as boomers stop doing all kinds of things... traveling, buying cars etc.
Of course we should be, but the line went down, therefore we need 600 think-pieces attempting to shame us for caring for our health.
Wife and I used to be avid drinkers but with the expansion of legal cannabis, it's just not as good of an option. I'll still make myself a negroni or an old fashioned on occasion, just because they're delicious, but I haven't drank-to-get-drunk in YEARS. If I'm actually trying to unwind (and who isn't given the sheer STATE of our world!) I'm spoiled for choices of substances that both don't interact with my depression nearly as badly as alcohol and, as a bonus, don't make me gain weight like an inflation fetish character.
The alcohol industry won spectacularly for decades a game of public policy and image where alcohol, a substance connected to industrial quantities of human death and suffering, was somehow the "accepted and normal" way to get fucked up when you wanted to be, even though again, numerous alternatives existed that were better for you. They're going to go through a similar process to tobacco I think, which is to say: it'll still be around, but it will shrink to an industry sized appropriately for the actual demand of it's product.
Their statement was appropriately hedged. They didn't claim small amounts were harmless, just that it wouldn't hurt in a "serious" way. Your rush to "um actually" someone meant you missed what was being said and "um actually"'d a statement that existed only in your mind. Anyway...
Everyone's threshold for "serious" harm is different.
For adult men, if you drink fewer than 15 drinks per week but greater than zero, the expected decrease of average lifespan is measured in months not years. Obviously more than zero. Is that "serious" enough to not partake? Up to each person.
I have an anecdotal situation dealing with dementia ridden parents from chronic drinking. And similar with grandparents. My risk tolerance is zero for alcohol. besides the lifespan being reduced: quality of life tanks off of a fucking cliff, dragging everyone you love and who loves you down there too.
Sorry to hear that, but your experiences aren't universal. Absolutism is a sensible option especially if there's been problems in the family. It's not the only sensible option for everyone.
In the US the reverse happened. Although people drink less, you do get offered alcohol everywhere. I don't remember it being present at places like zoos, kids indoor playgrounds, state fairs, etc. I was even at a birthday at a public park at 10am Sunday morning and saw some White Claws being passed around.
People drink less but there is less stigma around alcohol and obvious other once illegal drugs.
I think it very much depends on what groups. Because taboos on alcohol in formerly kosher environments are new (~2016+?), there's uneven adherence.
You saw the same thing with smoking in the 90s in the US. Kids nowadays wouldn't believe the amount of bitching there was that you couldn't smoke inside restaurants, etc.
And I get it -- cultural assumptions changing is messy and can feel confusing to people.
PS: Also alcohol sold in public spaces has relatively high margins, so that explains that.
I think smoking is going through a mini-resurgence right now.
I think back to my childhood and smoking was everywhere. My high school (graduated in 1989) had a smoking area for students. Cigarette smoke wafted out of the teacher's lounge. Kids would light up as soon as they got off the bus on a field trip. I don't have many specific memories of it, but people must have reeked.
Alcohol was also huge. We had a fifth year of high school (grade 13) and so there were plenty of 19 year old students and the drinking age was 19. Students would buy beer on their lunch period for the weekend and store it in their locker and nobody thought anything of it.
Genuinely feels like we're optimising for a less human way to interact with each other in pursuit of some nicer statistics (hooray people live two tenths of a year longer). Why even have children if everything surrounding them has to be miserable these days.
I do have a feeling that the social structures, and perhaps even biology, have evolved over centuries with alcohol present to grease the wheels. It can allow a higher baseline of introversion / neuroticism (which facilitates higher performance in some areas but worse socialising), with the ability to drink to boost the social aspect when needed. Chesterton's beer, in other words.
But at what cost ? If your society needs alcohol to help the introverted and slightly neurotic fit in then you are just incentivising those people to have substance abuse issues.
There's a compelling argument that civilization itself is a bunch of scaffolding around beer making. Human social lives have been shaped by alcohol since before agriculture. Conflating having a few drinks with substance abuse is like saying eating lunch is an eating disorder.
Society being healthier is a good thing, but not at the cost of human socialization.
In Eastern Europe it's still quite usual to have a few drinks at parties but we don't have it at lunch because one would most likely drive to work, so then it's a big no-no. Bulgaria and Greece have 0.5‰ tolerance for alcohol while driving and also allow public drinking (except where explicitly prohibited), but I would still not do it because it's easy to exceed the limit or get involved in an accident and then it's your fault regardless. Thus one might end up having a glass or two in the evening, after work hours. I'd possibly have a beer or two in the evening during dog walks or some wine in the evening with my wife. When we walk by the pub, my dog almost always pulls me towards the terrace.
In France they still drink a glass or two during lunch break. I've seen office workers in La Défense, where one would normally commute using Paris Métro Line 1.
> Like who the fuck actually enjoys acquantainces' children's birthdays without a beer or two?
That's really just a personal trait. I love going to my kid's friend's birthdays because we get to talk to the other parents who have become good friends as well, plus we don't have to look after the kids as much. "Adult time" and we know they're having fun. I don't have to drink in those.
I guess not everyone is that outgoing and not every parent group is as friendly as mine but it's hard to see getting drunk as a necessary counter to that.
> Turns out people suck at socialising without alcohol, and if alcohol disappears, people just stay at home and play video games or something.
Again, a personal trait. It's extremely common here in Brazil to drink but it's also very common to just not drink and have as much fun. Someone saying they need to have alcohol to enjoy themselves at a gathering is not going to be looked at very kindly, as if everyone else was just so boring they had to intoxicate themselves to bear through it.
> Someone saying they need to have alcohol to enjoy themselves at a gathering is not going to be looked at very kindly, as if everyone else was just so boring they had to intoxicate themselves to bear through it.
Well duh, which is why nobody would ever say that out loud. Doesn't stop anyone from thinking it, though.
Whenever I go to one of my kid's friends' birthday parties, it's basically split into two groups: 1. Boomers / GenX "the grandparents" sitting together drinking beer and socializing, and 2. GenZ / Millennials "the parents" sitting alone scrolling their phones.
> Like who the fuck actually enjoys acquantainces' children's birthdays without a beer or two?
That is a fair point, but personally I enjoy the time during which my child is playing with their peers and not trying to have me as a substitute for these kinds of interactions.
At this exact moment there is another post [1] on HN from Derek Thompson talking about the >70% drop over the past few decades in having other people over to socialize for dinner. Correlation is not causation, and...
> Like who the fuck actually enjoys acquantainces' children's birthdays without a beer or two?
You have a reason to go there, which is socialising with the parents presumably. If you can't have fun with people without drinking and then blame it on the lack of alcohol... that's no good.
The reason you go to kids' birthday parties because your child was invited and they're too young to go alone.
You can socialize and you kind of have to, but they've probably invited every classmate from preschool or whatever, so there's 20 people you probably haven't met before, have nothing in common except having kids the same age, and will probably never see again (except maybe at the next birthday party). And often the parties are held in a McDonalds or something, so catering is chicken nuggets and shitty cake with a Paw Patrol motif.
I get the sentiment, but it seems to me like a crutch that should be worked on getting rid of. It can't be that painful to be with other people, if it is, we need to work on ourselves and the culture. The jump from "I'm bored/uncomfortable" -> "might as well get drunk" seems wrong and a slippery slide to boot.
Human beings have been complaining about other people at social events being bores since antiquity. There is no work on oneself and the culture that will, at a societal level, make all such interactions pleasant.
Having a beer or two at a kids birthday party is a world away from getting trashed at a college party. Personally, I need a drink to loosen up and not be so uptight around casual acquaintances. I offer the same courtesy when I host birthday parties.
I heard a comedian make the point that HR only began to exist once women became more prevalent in the workforce. And at that point you do need much more oversight. And having women in the workforce is positive since they're ~50% of the population and offer distinct experiences.
But I wonder the unseen downsides of having HR so powerful in an organization. From useless screening of candidates, to overly corrective actions by everyone terrified HR will essentially fire them. Maybe it would be better to have 1-2 glasses of wine during lunch occasionally. They're extra-judicial, easily the most powerful group in an organization with little oversight.
My guess is that you're in the US. Here in the Netherlands, while there's plenty to criticize or laugh about, HR is also responsible for pensions, benefits, workplace safety, reintegration from sickness, ensuring that staff is well trained for their role, etc.
At my org they also organize the Thursday evening drinks session :)
> pensions, benefits, workplace safety, reintegration from sickness,
We use Justworks and they do that all for us. You're technically an employee of Justworks, and their name shows up on your paychecks. You hook into their health and 401k benefits, and they check all the workplace safety boxes. For instance, they'll mail you posters you legally have to put up in your office to ensure you're telling employees about overtime. HR plays literally no role in any of time apart from maybe selecting the health plans, something we do once a year and roll over every time.
> ensuring that staff is well trained for their role
What does an HR person know about training for your role? Is HR cross-trained in engineering for instance? Seems wildly different from my experience. HR would ineffectively screen candidates and ask you about buzz words. So they'll ask "do you have experience in Javascript" and I'll say "no, but I have a lot of experience in Typescript" and they'll just screen me out because they'll have no context.
And HR staff is also much more social so they'll pick up on awkwardness and screen there as well, when in many fields like engineering, the tolerance of awkwardness is much higher.
> Here in the Netherlands, while there's plenty to criticize or laugh about, HR is also responsible for pensions, benefits, workplace safety, reintegration from sickness, ensuring that staff is well trained for their role, etc.
HR is a powerful organization for a reason. Companies everywhere operate in a legal environment, and 90% of what HR does is keep the company from getting sued.
> 90% of what HR does is keep the company from getting sued
Which people would be wise to remember. HR is there to protect the company, not you or your co-workers. Sometimes these two things align but not always.
I believe this is the legal team. There are a lot of self imposed restrictions HR puts on companies, like the can't have a drink during lunch, but I don't understand how ignoring such rules leads to getting sued.
For sex stuff, sure, which was my point about women. A former employee can sue for being fired or harassed, etc. And I guess having everyone jump through hoops with training about all the various isms can provide plausible deniability when something illegal happens. But I think you're overstating the role HR plays here.
> A former employee can sue for being fired or harassed
Yes. This is where all the rules come from. It's just like airline safety or workplace safety: for almost every rule, you can find the incident which caused it to be put in place.
The problem here is you not believing sexual harassment is real, or a real problem. There have been enough women bullied out of jobs they loved by harassment from male co-workers, over and over again, and enough of them have won their lawsuits or tribunals against the employers, that there are rules against this, which will be enforced.
And enough people will have used "I was drinking" as an excuse for harassment that companies feel the need to limit their risk by banning drinking.
People get annoyed at HR for being a "compliance" role, but it's the same phenomenon as hating the people checking the fire exits, the ladders, PAT testing all your electrical devices (this may be UK specific?), making you wear a hard hat and safety boots, or making you reconcile the cash in the register with the receipts.
> The problem here is you not believing sexual harassment is real, or a real problem
???
Where do you get that from? I do think it's a problem and it becomes a problem because we accept mixed-sex work environments. HR isn't there to protect women from getting harassed, they're mostly there to protect management. Sexual harassment is still illegal, whether HR exists or not.
I don't think HR ladies are roaming factory floors making sure people are wearing hardhats. That's a managers responsibility and the company has legal obligations.
So when exactly has that non-mixed-sex workplace existed? It hasn't, the mixed nature was just buried under ungodly amounts of hierarchy full of gender defaults. With harassment just taken as a given. Partially held in check by, well, good guys who I guess have always existed, and the ones from the dark ages must have been very good given the lack of external checks, but those 20 or whatever percent who weren't must have made life quite miserable for those at the wrong side of the default imbalance. Yes, progress has happened but we should still have more of it, not less. And HR plays a role in this progress, even if at times it appears a little annoying or excessive.
There was literally a legislative marriage bar in the Irish Civil Service from 1924 till 1973.
The marriage bar forced female civil servants in Ireland to resign from their jobs when they got married and stopped married women from joining the permanent civil service.
We were far from the only country to have such mandates, and it was done so as an equivalence with the governance processes of the private sector. Divorce was only legalised in Ireland 1995.
How many lady sailors, how many lady soldiers, how many lady construction workers, how many lady ditch diggers, how many lady truckers?
In the past (and still today in many places), most of the workforce were not working in mixed gender places. Just take a look at photographic evidence of the many factories that only employed women.
Yes, that's what I meant. Employers are the deep pocket defendants that might get roped into a lawsuit resulting from bad behavior on the part of their employees.
The only problems with that reasoning is that women have been in the workplace for hundreds of years (domestic service, textiles, etc), and human resources started appearing in about 1900, approximately 50 years before mixed workplaces were common.
Most industries were almost exclusively single sex and things worked well without HR
HR was invented because workplaces didn't work well, and that was about 50 years before mixed workplaces were common. You're just projecting your biases and ignoring the facts.
That is over the top. HR on the whole protects the employees and the organization. The experience you reference is not my experience at all and sounds disingenuous. We don't get to do whatever we want in the workplace, there are social structures that need to be adhered to. Like with any power structure there are people who will maximize their control for its own sake which is unfortunate but not an excuse to dismiss the whole concept.
I'd be very surprised if a full review didn't reveal that early HR more often existed to protect high position males against females in the workplace.
Behaviors and cultural norms don't change overnight, and HR is ultimately subordinate to leadership, especially in private companies with partnership structures, etc.
Modern HR feels like a better balance, with the caveat that it will usually protect the company from any employee.
Surely a comedian isn't the right person for this analysis.
The first HR departments were created to defuse feminist agitation for equality in the workplace. They were place in opposition to women's equality, not in alignment to it.
Why do you believe that HR has little oversight? HR reports to the bosses same as everybody else. They aren't some rogue insurgent organization within corporations.
I don't think we can blame this one on HR, people just aren't drinking as much alcohol, all over the developed world.
The US isn't even an outlier. I'm not sure why, I don't buy the health reason argument, since I don't think people pay attention to health studies. And they have been smoking (marijuana) which is terrible for the lungs and has other health issues. And there are problems with obesity.
It's not because of health consciousness.
Overall, people aren't drinking or having sex or going out as much, these are all in decline.
People are more neurotic now because of ubiquitous gamification and scoring. Health and aging and looks are scored, alcohol will cost you. Appearing controlled and on brand is a game, alcohol throws the game off. We’ve chosen a dry panopticon.
if we can be in offices now without regressive troglodytes in positions of authority freely making loud racist (and completely personalized) insults directed at their non-white peers and subordinates, to the guffaws of all the other men in the room (this is an actual thing I witnessed as a young intern at a defense contractor in the late 1980s, and no I was not the victim. to get a racist incident so glaring that even in 1988, it stays in the mind of a young white 18 year old kid for 40 years, means it had to be pretty bad), HR probably didn't ruin exactly everything.
Loads of women in the workforce in WWII. Was there anything like HR? (Not counting the recruiting departments, which were focused on finding & retaining workers in a very tight labor market.)
Instead of "women in the workforce", I'd say it was changing society and social norms. A century-ish ago, in quite a few sorts of places, workspace disputes might well be settled with fists. (Yes, there were many norms and unwritten rules about that.) Post-WWII, there was a long trend of gentrifying social mores, which discouraged such things. New laws and legal norms encouraged lawsuits over things previously tolerated, or settled informally. And more than just women, civil rights laws and norms pushed into the workplace. Bring in the lawyers, reporters, new public ideals - and a business really needed an HR Dept., to prevent disasters.
Yea I don’t get all the moping in this thread about alcohol being in decline.
In my country it was wayyy to socially acceptable (almost required) to get blackout drunk every weekend; people fighting; drunk drivers; the amount of alcoholics destroying their life because it’s so accessible.
Don’t get me wrong i enjoy a drink once in a while, even getting drunk sometimes but overall it’s a terrible terrible drug.
According to the book "Drunk", the reason you drink with people is it's more likely their true self comes out and you can more easily find out if they are trustworthy and worth doing business with. Not saying that therefore you should drink, nor do I know if it can actually be backed up.
I suspect that alcohol was a technology invented to protect the society from psychopaths. The psychopaths do not have instinctive empathy, but they can pretend. Alcohol ruins their ability to keep control, so when they get drunk, they will say or do something crazy that you will remember the next day.
It would make sense that when psychopaths get the power, they will eliminate the detectors.
Lol I would love to see how he argues that alcohol increases creativity. This is one of those things that sound plausible but very debatable if true or not.
I think it's more likely that it reduces your tendency to discard ideas that on the surface seem bad. Some of those seemingly bad ideas will turn out to be good, so if you take them seriously you'll look more creative, even though you didn't actually come up with any additional ideas.
Yes even that framing is a bit extreme. It increases your risk tolerance.
So you're more open to new creative ideas, they don't even have to be that crazy, merely not the status quo.
In my own case it does (or at least the first one does) because it reduces inhibition from creative impostor syndrome.
It also helped occasionally in severe OCD crises when no other strategy would break a cycle of compulsion: literally a single shot of alcohol will.
And it can help if I am stuck in self-defeating ADHD loops.
None of these things are advisable or worth the health damage even small amounts of alcohol could be causing. The only thing that is worth say a dozen units per year is reducing social anxiety. There are people I only know because I had a rare drink.
Weed massively increases creativity in everybody I asked, sure as hell does for me. Its not very controllable, ideas comes semi-randomly and works with topic processed previously, but damn so many results are actually good and stand test of time (I mean decades, like apartment interior design).
Alcohol? Social lubricant for sure, but creativity is contained only in the mind of a drunken fool who thinks better of his ideas than he should. That I never experienced, nor have witnessed and I certainly didn't avoid such situations.
While I don't agree or disagree, we had a rule with my grad school colleagues and prof that we couldn't have certain discussions if four people had a pint in hand and the fifth was there drinking water, taking notes lol.
> the reason you drink with people is it's more likely their true self comes out and you can more easily find out if they are trustworthy and worth doing business with.
This doesn't work when you're a person being encouraged to drink in an asymmetric power dynamic and it turns out the people you're drinking with are monsters. You end up in a tragic story like what happened in the Dartmouth Predator Professor Gang and perhaps the recent Cornell case as well.
College students have basically stopped drinking. I had a recent Berkeley college grad tell me no one drinks at Berkeley anymore because they're afraid it will shrink their brain. Things are just so competitive that having fun in college is a complete afterthought. It's constantly chasing grades, internships, side projects, networking, job interviews etc.
Not in the UK from what I can see, there's stories about it in the news but try actually going to hackney on a saturday - it's full of 22 year olds drinking (and also often smashing loads of bag...).
Maybe that's not a representative sample but young people still want to socialise and at that age you can get away with it so why not.
Having said that, the UK is absolutely a nation of pissheads, the US has always has that puritanical streak
There's a pretty strong observation bias when it comes to college drinking. The social gatherings of basically anybody who does drink ends up involving drinking, which pushes out the non-drinkers, until you end up with two completely distinct social circles. To add to the effect, alcohol is wildly useful in socializing with strangers, so the non-drinkers know far fewer people.
Thus, if you ask someone who does drink they'll probably say "everybody drinks, except for a few people", and if you ask someone who doesn't, they'll assume most people don't, except for the minority of people getting loudly drunk in public. That was true even where I was at school, where polling found that 70% of the student body was drinking on the weekends.
The same phenomenon holds for both wine and baijiu — young people are drinking less of either one. In China, over the past years, even Moutai, the country's most famous liquor brand, has seen its sales decline. This really does seem to be a global trend.
Personally I microdose THC via an extraction I make myself(somewhat ironically using alcohol). Can’t do it in the mornings as I wish though, society still hasn’t caught up with a more heterogeneous drug use, only caffeine and tobacco are erlaubt…
I wish I could do anything with THC. It's not illegal under Ohio (where I live) law anymore.
But my job involves chemical plants and oil refineries, and they use DISA, and DISA drug tests everyone thoroughly.
I can count on getting a test that involves hair, urine, and breath samples at least twice per year. (It's supposed to be annual and random, but "random" seems to be rather heavily-weighted.)
THC hangs out way too long for that.
It's stupid: A person can be completely ripped on booze every night and cocaine occasionally, or live entirely in a world of psychedelic drugs like LSD or mescaline and that's... fine, I guess?
I have an acquaintance who works for Chevron in a normal office job. In California, only the refinery workers get regular drug tests. In Texas, everyone does. And this dude used to smoke a fair amount of weed. It’s a good job, so he stays clean, but there’s really no reason to require it of someone in his role - he has never even been to one of their refineries.
I work inside of these plants, but only just barely. I'm not turning wrenches and cutting pipes and stuff; instead,.I work on the back ends of their radio systems.
I just drive over to the radio shanty near the tower, park, and walk inside to poke at a computer or move a wire or whatever.
A friend of mine does work on the corpo AV systems for some of these same places. This doesn't ever put him inside the plant; he's always separated from it by a magical chain-link fence.
He was rather surprised when I told him how arduous the drug testing was, as he was never required to do anything like that (and wouldn't stand a chance at passing if he were).
Taking THC at night is not good for you health either. That's going to mess with your sleep, which will have all kinds of long-term health impacts on you.
That's not been my experience at all.
I sleep like a baby thanks to it.
We're all different with different needs.
Read the sibling comment from 'cromka'. That's my experience as well.
I'm taking a break due to anticipating a drug screening, but REM suppression/interruption is a thing with cannabis and I've been having horrible trauma nightmares without it. Drug screenings are anti-human and it's ridiculous that due to federal prohibition companies aren't required to respect medical cannabis prescriptions.
I struggle with ADHD, have been for years, and no pharmaceutical drug helps, while they all have severe side effects. Meanwhile every time I take a single drag of my friend’s joint, I feel most relaxed and have most coherent thoughts, while able to pull the exact words from memory I need. A single drag, mind you.
I have not heard a single doctor talk about microdosing THC as a cure for ADHD and I wonder if my experience is coincidental or there’s really something there?
This is basically what I've replaced with my tincture.
I used to roll the smallest doobies you can imagine(one drag joints basically). However since it's terrible for the lungs, I've completely replaced it with my shot.
The effect is slightly different but it works well against my ADHD.
Definitely something, there's an intersection between THC and neurodivergence for sure. One line of thought relates to the amygdala, the idea is that reducing the activity in that brain regions creates a sort of "space" for other things to get processed, like emotional memories from the hippocampus, so the limbic system is involved.
The subjective experience has a loose correlation to mindfulness meditation which has also been linked to the amygdala/hippocampus processing loop.
I still enjoy drinking a bit but agree with your take in principal. I'd rather smoke a joint, take an edible, or drink a thc drink most nights than go for alcohol, and it strikes me as odd that although it's been fully legal in my country for years, it would still be wildly more taboo than alcohol in the workplace, even though nearly everyone probably does something outside of work.
Same here. I've tried edibles multiple times as they're legal here. The experience ranged from mildly bad to horrible. I either felt like a zombie (not relaxed) or became paranoid and anxious. I had to come to the conclusion it just doesn't gel with me.
CBD does seem to help with my joint and muscle pains though.
Same here. I've never had a good experience with weed. Smoking it or edibles. I feel like the former doesn't do anything for me and the latter just sends me into a panic state from which I can't come down for several hours.
> 10-15 years ago it was expected you would have 1-2 glasses of wine at lunch as a front office guy / banker while talking shop. Now you will get a trip to HR unless meeting a client or in a place that still allows it.
It's been like this in America for decades. Even places with "beer on tap" the expectation is you don't drink until after the work day. If you were pulling the tab at lunch you'd get a talk from your boss and eventually HR
It wasn't this way always (obv?). In the early 80s it was still acceptable for the entire engineering dept to get sloshed at lunch w/o any expectation of getting work done upon return. The salesdroid would sometimes accompany us. This was at a very large mostly defense contractor on the east coast of Florida.
I have the inverse experience in Europe; my former boss would almost force me to drink when we went out for lunch sometimes.
There was rarely a meeting with him where I didn’t come home buzzed.
How much of this is due to famous podcasters? There's the Huberman obsession with alcohol being poisonous, the looksmaxxing, and then you can argue, good science that shows it's bad.
It's influenced me - I was drinking probably 2-3 drinks every night for decades, and lately I've cut down by 60-80 percent weekly. That's still poisonous though, if you ask the GenZ social media world.
I'm pretty sure the causality is backwards. People aren't drinking less because they hear people saying it's poison, people are more willing to tolerate people calling it poison because they're drinking less. People have preached about the evils of drinking to excess as far back as we have records of people discussing stuff. It just got ignored, because it's a crucial social lubricant, and thus everybody imbibes anyway. With the rise of addictive social media and gaming, we've seen a decrease in socialization in meatspace, and that's where people drink. If you're missing out on the positive aspects of alcohol anyway, then it's a lot easier to listen to people talking about the negative aspects. And then those voices get amplified to justify not doing the thing you weren't doing anyway.
We have hard data now on the negative impacts of alcohol, even from moderate amounts. Research shows it is carcinogenic. Back when I was a kid there was talk of light drinking being good for your health.
We also have strong data on how its bad for your sleep.
Much of the talk of alcohol being poison in the past was from drunk driving, spousal abuse, spending all the families money. This largely applied to drunks. But now the data has come in a way that doesn't involve any of these traditional ills is still bad for you.
It's probably a combo of the legit science that there really is no safe/good level of drinking from a health perspective (and previous studies saying otherwise are bunk), and all the podcasters/influencers extolling the virtues of not drinking.
Why We Sleep really impacted my view on drinking. It really does mess with your sleep, so I keep my drinking to occasional and on the light side.
Wearables also play a role in this. I had two beers between like 5:30-7:00 on Saturday and my sleep data was messed up. We are talking two 5.5% beers at dinner on a 220 lb man.
It's much harder to ignore the fact that alcohol has all these negative effects.
Still, I think drinking occasionally while socializing is a good thing, and that people becoming hermits is a huge negative.
How badly was the sleep messed up, is the trade off? Sometimes two beers is useful as a social lubricant or just a relaxing aid. Stress at work and spiraling rumination does a terrible thing to my sleep as well.
I think there's optimization culture and then there's excess. Drinking 2-3 drinks every night for 15 years probably was excessive for me. But one or two nights where sleep is affected per week is tolerable. Life is short, and deprivation might make it a little longer but life's not supposed to feel long (as in living life means doing a little bit of harm here and there).
Is that true about the army? Seems like in the navy they do everything they can to stop sailors from drinking (probably resulting in the opposite effect)
Seem so on the whole in Europe in higher-income countries. But the decline seems to be slowing.
(It is surprisingly difficult to find annual alcohol consumption statistics on google. It feels like swimming upstream. It keeps giving me data on alcohol-associated deaths, or total alcohol+tobacco spending!)
WHO dataset, alcohol pure litres total per capita annual [0]
Switzerland (4th biggest decrease):
2020: 11.4 litres
2024: 8.8 litres
UK:
2000: 12.3 litres
2024: 10.4 litres
Ireland:
2000: 14.78 litres
2024: 10.27 litres
There are some countries which have seen an increase over that time period:
10 litres alcohol is about 100 bottles of wine a year (exactly 100 at 13.33% alcohol content).
I drink a lot of wine, but 1 full bottle is too much to have regularly. A half bottle - two generous glasses - is more reasonable, but you'll still feel it the next day. And 10 litres of alcohol puts you at 8 generous glasses a week.
> surprisingly difficult to find annual alcohol consumption statistics on google. It feels like swimming upstream.
Seems like the WHO might not have generated a per country per capita alcohol consumption dataset after 2020? Imagine COVID + US defunding in 2025 (~20% of budget) caused a lot of turmoil in lower priorities. :(
Average person drinks 9 litres of alcohol per year factoid actualy just statistical error. average person drinks 3 litres per year. Wendt Georg aka "Norm", who spends the majority of his life in a bar in Boston is an outlier adn should not have been counted
You're looking at covid. Look at the 25 year period from .90 in 2000 up to 9.3 by 2008, then flat until covid, then a bump during covid times before lowering at 9.5
Sure you can say it's reduced from a peak which happened to coincide with an unprecedented pandemic. Wake me when it's back to the 9.3 norm of the 2010s let alone the 9 it was around 2000.
Now it's quite possible that fewer people are drinking at all, but of those who are drinking, they are drinking more.
Or it's quite possible that annecdotes about who you see in the gym and on instagram are just annecdotes
(for what it's worth I have seen data showing under 30s are drinking less in 2025 than under 30s drank in 2005, or 1985, etc, which would imply over 30s are drinking more to make up for it, but I don't have it to hand and it may not have been US specific)
Same with anything that requires a security clearance. I know a lot of good engineers and they all tell me it's tacitly accepted a few of their coworkers are functioning alcoholics. Because that's the only drug they're legally allowed to do
I actually think lack of religion is one of the major reasons for a declining birth rate. The church was an important third space.
Even now in the Korean-American community, the running joke is that if one suddenly starts going to church in their 20s, it's only because they're looking for a romantic partner.
The "Bangladesh Miracle" says otherwise: by intensive effort the birth rate was brought down from 6.7 to 1.89.
(people keep forgetting how much reducing population growth and teenage pregnancy has been an explicit policy goal for decades! Getting it down to replacement rate is good, now we're arguing about the other direction needlessly)
That's because they have arranged marriages, and Muslim women have no choice in the matter. Men don't need to be good at socializing with women to reproduce when women are treated as property.
I think they have practically unrelated causal factors.
About children the case is quite obvious. We created the cultural environment in which children are considered no less human than productive members of society and deserve if not the same amount of resources, then more. This order aligns well both with Western worldview and with human biological nature, so people are easily accepting and strengthening it.
But if we are spending on a child as many resources as on productive members of society, that means for fertility rate 2 we should forgo half of our resources. So on average to forgo half of your work for children are not very tempting, but to spend on children less is sociocultural unacceptable. The only solution? Less children.
I think fertility rate 1.5 is already pretty high for such environment and only show how strong biological drive to procreate for humans is. And government's attempts to increase birth rates by spending more seems like rather terrible idea: that only will increase cultural expectation on children costs and effectively will lower the birth rate even more.
Citation STRONGLY needed. Best case would be correlation, not a causal relationship, between factors that limit alcohol consumption and things causing lower birth rates and "epidemic loneliness".
Some counter theories: People have fewer kids not because they drink less, but because children are extremely expensive, wage growth has been stagnant, women make up a larger share of the workplace (and don't want to lose their spot), and birth control is more readily available.
People are lonely because: women are capable of larger roles in the workforce and it's upended social expectations, therapy has caused people to avoid others that they deep destructive/negative in their lives, technology has caused us all to be alienated, or society has shifted but culture hasn't caught up to these changes (assuming they're lonely at all and not just experiencing the same existence previous generations did but now with constant news cycles and the ability to tap into 24/7 feeds of people having fun).
> I still see construction workers drinking a can at 6:30pm however.
At least here in Germany, this is all but gone. Our version of OSHA cracked down on that hard simply because of all the accidents that happen when you combine alcohol, a lot of intake of alcohol due to the reality of physical labor (aka, sweating) and heavy machinery.
And on top of that the police in rural areas also enforces alcohol limits these days.
Nah it’s just a (small) drink (Bierchen) you’re having with coworkers at the end of the working day (Feierabend).
Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a party.
I saw that in Rome 13 years ago. Three road workers pulling up some bricks to access a utility. One guy in the hole, two guys outside the hole, one with a tallboy beer, at 930.
I'm sure it comes with a lot of problems but there's something to be said about a relaxed society.
My dad spent a lot of time in Spain back in the day and was a regular at a local cafe, where he'd get a coffee and a tortilla (Spanish omelette) for breakfast. The cafe was popular with construction workers too and they would order the same, only they would top it off with a shot of Carlos Tercero, the cheapest brandy.
That's very unusual for 20 years ago. I remember this from my childhood, 60 years ago, where this was common. But even in the 90s that had stopped almost completely.
You misspelled meth. Roofers do meth. Outdoor trades do uppers. Indoor trades smoke weed. Everyone smokes cigarettes. Except the electricians, they smoke pole. Everyone knows that.
Maybe we live in different parts of the country but in bavaria it’s completely fine and common to have a beer at lunch, both blue and white collar workers
Oh. I can't decode American 12 hour formats, that shit is too weird and convoluted. I thought you meant at 0630 in the morning which ahsolutely used to be a thing in construction here.
It's a shrinking market, but it surely doesn't help that people are simply boycotting US goods.
For example: Swedish sales for US wine was down around 20% in 2025. The overall decline was about 10%. In a shrinking market, you don't want to also have a shrinking market share.
I'm sure the figures are similar in other countries - and this year it's going to be very different in Canada as well. I imagine Canada was always a big importer of US wine seeing as it's close by and they don't have much domestic production.
Seeing many people comment that they drink less; I'm happy to report I still try to drink as often as I can (Which is still not as often as I want).
Yes, but many of those wineries import their grapes from California (or other places).
My wife and I participate in this boycott and were drinking a sparkling white from Mission Hill Winery which is one of the biggest BC wineries. We noticed the label said something like "Produced in Canada" and then listed grapes imported from California.
Wines that are produced from 100% BC grapes are labelled "BC VQA" and only 19% of the wines in BC are BC VQA.
This was a temporary measure for a couple vintages/years after a frost decimated nearly all the vines in the BC Okanagan. The regulators stepped in to allow relaxed importation rules to help wineries survive. A winery like Mission Hill typically grows and sources all of its grapes within BC.
I think this is temporary and related to crop failures when a lot of BC berries froze. AFAIK they grow their own grapes otherwise. Who knows for how much longer and if the climate will allow growing grapes sustainably at all in those places.
The wine from Canada is not good, unless you like dessert wine/icewine. Maybe there are some exceptions for riesling but it's too cold to grow nice vines there.
You can't be making such blanket statements. There are a lot of great wines. Some of the best syrah I've ever had is from BC, and there are plenty of other great wines.
I had wine from the niagara peninsula - it was either cabernet or a cab/merlot red blend. I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy most dry reds (which is a lot). It wasn't exactly the rival of France's appellations (high bar) but still very good.
That's because the LCBO has a monopoly on wine sales in Ontario and it's very difficult for Ontario wineries to get their good wines into the LCBO. It's a combination of shelf fees, minimum volume requirements, and an idiosyncratic evaluation system where their participation costs are not covered.
Spend some time at wineries on the Niagara escarpment and you'll find some great wines, especially whites that benefit from the limestone heavy soils. Even the large producers that have a poor public reputation for quality (Trius, Iniskillin, etc.) have much better wines available on site that never make it to the LCBO. For the most part (some exceptions), the people who run these wineries are wine enthusiasts who genuinely care about quality. Prices for that quality are higher than other wine regions with more favorable climates, higher production, and lower labour costs though, that is true.
> but it surely doesn't help that people are simply boycotting US goods.
Seems like that would be such a negligible number that, while it doesn't help, it doesn't hurt either. It's just statistically irrelevant when it comes to a global market like wine.
Exactly. Nobody was buying US wine, even the experienced winos and wine distributors for fancy dining that i've met here in Italy probably have never drunk US wine. Maybe new zeland, australia, south america, but i've never heard of somebody drinking an US wine.
And they weren't boycotting it, it's just not a good enough deal to buy from our prospective, even when people are looking to spend good money, there is better stuff to buy from elsewhere.
I think that trying to explain the reduced sales of California grape growers in terms of an international boycott of US products seems like highly motivated reasoning, not factual reasoning.
US exports have been growing every year since the pandemic low of 2020
We obviously do not have full data for 2026, but the first half is higher than the same time in 2025. But this is really driven by economic activity, so if there is a global recession, you can expect fewer people to buy US goods, just as you can expect Americans to buy fewer foreign goods. The 2020 low was not because of a boycott, but a general economic decline, and as far as I am aware, no boycott of US goods has ever been detected in the trade data, it's always been a media affair or hyperlocalized (e.g. some people boycotting Apple or Windows or Google seem to be the most common media stories).
And I think this is a pretty general situation, e.g. consumer boycotts rarely show up in trade data - to hit trade data you need government sanctions, nothing else moves the needle.
Noted elsewhere, Canada accounts for more than a third of US wine exports [1], so the trade-war with Canada in 2026 surely wasn't helpful either to keep export-volume at 2025-levels...
In a story explaining California wine growers pain, be aware that 98% of California wine is consumed in the US. Exports are negligible.
This is like when a story about housing costs was posted and the Canadians chimed in that the US housing woes are due to not having access to Canadian lumber, and the board had to explain to him that that 80% of lumber used in US production is sourced domestically.
The story is way more complicated and hides where the pain points are.
The real average is closer to 25% of lumber coming from Canada but if you look at specific types like SPF which is important for framing, it’s almost evenly split between US domestic and Canada-sourced. Douglas Fir is heavily sourced from Canada. But some lumber like SYP is almost all US domestic.
And in terms of particular states, tariffing Canada sourced lumber has outsized impact because Canadian lumber has a freight advantage so getting US sourced lumber is going to drive up prices even if Canadian is avoided.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the wine story was equally complicated.
I don't find your general data on US exports very convincing for this case.
Is there any way to separate US exports of consumer products (which would be affected by consumer boycotts) vs. US exports for industrial products or capital goods (which I wouldn't expect to be affected by these boycotts)?
It is entirely possible that specific consumer-focused industries (wine, tourism, etc.) are being strongly affected by international boycotts and having decreasing exports, even while industry/capital-focused exports (petroleum, plastics, weapons, medical equipment, telecom equipment, data centre electronics, etc.) are increasing at a faster rate which would hide the consumer boycott effect in total export $.
Apart from the inflation mentioned above, there are a multitude of factors at play that cannot be determined by just looking at aggregated numbers. The price of some goods, for example, has skyrocketed due to general scarcity (electronics, oil...). Fx got worse for the dollar vs other currencies. And are numbers only for goods, or do they include services?
It is definitely a reality that certain goods have seen localized boycotts, like alcohol in Canada, and some services have had to change (data sovereignty in Europe got a lot of traction).
I think comparing by tonnage would be more apt than comparing dollar figures which are subject to a lot of external factors, including currency exchange rates and inflation.
Also, the idea that California wine - of all products - is very sensitive to exports is a bit strange since although California wine sales account for more revenue than the entire wine industry of any other country -- 68 billion dollars worth of sales each year (https://wineinstitute.org/our-industry/statistics/california...), the state exports relatively little, only about a billion dollars of California wine is sold abroad. So 98% of California wine is sold within the US. Only 2% is exported.
And yet there are so many people on this board that are convinced that Europe, of all places, is somehow responsible for driving California wine grower sales woes.
It's pretty funny if you think about it, you have some Bosnian dude and when you tell him that Ford is facing a sales slump he immediately shoots back -- it's because the Bosnians are no longer buying Fords! Truly an amazing example of economic narcissism.
TOTAL Retail value (includes markups by wholesalers, retailers and restaurateurs), NOT Sales Revenue.
> "only about a billion dollars of California wine is sold abroad"
That's Sales revenue [1]
> "So 98% of California wine is sold within the US. Only 2% is exported."
The data is right on the page you shared.
Total shipments 2024 [0] (in millions of 9-liter cases):
California wine shipments to US and export: 232.3
California wine shipments to US: 203.5
--> Export: 28,8
So the export volume in 2024 appears to be >12%, not 2%
There's no data for 2025, but wine exports fell by ~20% in 2025 [1], if TOTAL wine shipments fell equally this is quite a strong dent in volumes already in 2025. So 2026 doesn't look rosy to begin with before any trade-war being added...
> "It's pretty funny if you think about it, you have some Bosnian dude [..]"
So by my thinking, one billion is not 12% of 67 Billion. Indeed, it is less than 2%.
> Let's not do that please.
I agree that we shouldn't do it, or rather that commentators shouldn't do it, but I don't agree that we shouln't talk about commentators doing this.
You literally have this situation. Only 2% of California wine goes to the export market at all, and people are literally arguing that their personal boycott of some nation that doesn't even account for a billion in sales is driving California wine export woes. It is a bizarre form of economic narcissism and my example was apt.
As already stated, this is the ESTIMATED RETAIL VALUE of the wine, NOT the Sales Revenue.
You then conflate this with the EXPORT VALUE of Californian wine, which is not the retail value but the price the winery is selling the wine for to a foreign buyer.
Apart from that the value also doesn't matter, in the context of AMOUNT of grapes purchased the QUANTITY of wine produced is more relevant than the VALUE created with it.
> "You literally have this situation. Only 2% of California wine goes to the export market at all, and people are literally arguing that [..]"
Again, it's not 2%. You literally need to read the sources you cited yourself. They provide good data to educate yourself and see where you're trying to force a conclusion without the proper facts.
And nobody is "arguing" what you state. The OP stated "It's a shrinking market, but it surely doesn't help that people are simply boycotting US goods." and you're trying to ridicule him for that without having any leg to stand on...
This is an incredibly disingenuous and specious argument.
The discussion is about US wine production and consumption. You present the aggregate total vale of all US exports in US dollars to 6 significant digits. Does the variance of the volume of wine exports in litres even show up in those 6 signifcant digits?
Consider: (1) is six significant digits of precision justified, or is it insignificant accurancy? (2) Do those aggregate numbers take into account inflation? (3) Do those aggregate numbers take into account the (not insignificant) devaluation of the US dollar? (4) Do those aggregate numbers include both goods and services?
No, if you were to make an honest argument by quoting US exports, you need to limit it to the volume of US wine exports in litres. Misdirection can be a great tool of propaganda but is not a useful contribution to interesting intellectual discourse.
I responded to the claim that this was due to a boycott of US goods writ large, not a specific boycott about wine.
What would be the reason to boycott wine only and not other US goods? What about the US wine industry is controversial that does not apply to the other industries?
So I wrote that there is no evidence of boycotts showing up in trade data, which is true.
Then, after doing some digging, so I pointed out that almost none of California wines are exported anyway. So obviously this cannot be the result of foreign boycotts.
So let's get back to the "incredibly disingenuous and specious argument", and start with the dictionary definition of those and go from there, because that accurately describes how I view your response.
> I responded to the claim that this was due to a boycott of US goods writ large, not a specific boycott about wine.
While boycotting iPhones might be difficult, taking the Cabernet one shelf over takes almost no effort or negative impact to the consumer. It's rarely more expensive to switch from a US wine e.g. French or Australian. It's sold in the same store.
For the specific example of Sweden, every single wine bottle in every store is sorted by country in the store. And it sits above a price sticker with the flag of the origin country on it.
That's wildly different from similar choices e.g. when you pick a can of Hellman's Mayonnaise, there's no US flag under it. But for wine in particular, the country of origin is almost always known to the buyer and involved in the process, even if Sweden stands out as an extreme due to the flag being under the bottle.
That's why I believe the boycott which isn't a boycott on US wine but on US products in general, is _most notable_ for wine or in some other case not notable at all because it's a small effect and consumers don't always know what is American and what isn't (Hellman's example). But for wine, everyone knows.
The difference between the general slump in wine sales (10%) and the decline in US sales (20%) could have more factors, such as price. But it's easy to assume - and polls suggest - that consumers really do avoid the US wine.
> seems like highly motivated reasoning, not factual reasoning
Drawing conclusions by presenting total US exports doesn't seem like factual reasoning. Most exports are of non-consumer products, which aren't as influenced by boycotts. A true analysis would take into consideration items that consumers can chose to boycott.
Long time casual wine drinker (and occasional beer), I find myself drinking less and less. Two reasons: first drinking a glass of average wine for the sake of having a drink makes no sense anymore. I prefer to have a drink more seldom but pick a better wine, that I actually enjoy. Second, as I get older I see that even a modest amount of alcohol has negative effect on me: during the day I get groggy, during the night my sleep is worse (I know, counterfactual, but so it is).
It's long known that drinking alcohol disturbs your sleep. You're getting slumbery and probably will fall asleep easily but the sleep will not be as wholesome.
Same here. Perhaps this is something that doesn't happen to people with a robust tolerance, but I'll never test that theory. Maybe before cell phones and Netflix, people just slept a lot more to compensate.
I think different types of alcohol have quite a different effect on me now (40yo) - wine will get me mellow and sleepy, beer would get me to be more social, whiskey will make me more energetic / risk taking.
Knowing that I can tune my level of enjoyment of whatever is happening.
Though there is an old saying from where I grew up - alcohol is stealing happiness from tomorrow to have it today.
And that has always stuck with me - whenever I drink I get a bit happier that instant and feel worse more tired the next day.
And that is ok if I am going to a social event and I want to get the most out of it, and I know next day will be chill anyway - who’ll can make the “chill” time even more chill.
You're just describing normal aging though. People have been experiencing this (particularly #2) since time immemorial. The question is why young people are not arriving to fill the void left by you (and me), as they always have. I agree with other posters, it's some combination of economics, weed, and culture.
Interestingly this was basically what started it for me. Empty calories and research showing it literally inhibits muscle gain irregardless of the caloric effect since your body basically switches to "get this shit the fuck out" before continuing to be normal.
Secondary benefit for me was all the other stuff. Now I find that the once or twice in the entire year where I might have one drink it only takes like one drink to already feel it.
The impact on our sleep is one of the main reasons our having a beer or glass of wine with dinner trailed off. Sometimes now we go months in between any sort of alcohol.
> during the day I get groggy, during the night my sleep is worse (I know, counterfactual, but so it is)
Have you tried lighter wines or prosecco? I've had some summer wine from a grape variety called Inzolia in Sicily. Quite light on alcohol, tasted a bit like lime water.
My experience is that grogginess really depends on the wine that you drink, but it always ruins my sleep if I exceed two glasses (150 ml). For instance I would almost never drink high alcohol (>13.5%) or high sugar content Rieslings. They almost always give me headaches.
se here. i enjoy beer but annoyes me that they all have the same 5% alcohol content. its too much, I just like the taste, I don't want to be sleepy. non alcoholic beers taste terrible
Fortunately, this is not universally true anymore.
There are now beers brewed with extremely low-alc yeasts (which have a trait that makes them unable to digest maltose) that make <0,5% alc beers with good flavours. This combined with sour malts and good hops can give you great flavours. These low-alc yeasts remove the need to maltreat the beer for removing the alc. And it is often OK to have 0,5% alc -- maybe not during pregnancy, but to avoid the annoying 5% alc. It's most probably not the industry cheap shit though.
There's also the possibility to just stop the fermentation with normal yeasts at any point, e.g., at 1% alc. I've had a couple of very good beers like this, too.
There is a new method for 0,0% beer. I sometimes drink a 0,0 mixed with lemonade (called Radler in germany) after sport. There is also Fassbrause which is not a beer at all (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fassbrause ) but tastes a bit malty
The ones in Japan are fantastic. I'm addicted to them. The Asahi 0% alc, 0% calorie beer is 70% as good as their regular beer in my opinion. Unfortunately it's around the same price.
Disclaimer: I lost my sense of smell due to a head injury, so that does muddle my ability to taste things. But I think with beer a sense of smell is less important
I swapped my daily beer for Heaps Normal XPA, which I felt was about 80% as good as regular beer. Then after a few months of that I realised I no-longer craved a beer, so swapped to sparkling water.
Now I only drink maybe once a month. It's great. Happy I kicked the mild habit.
Might be a market issue. I grew up along beer drinkers and over the past few years, so many good alcohol free beers have entered the German market, that a lot of them shifted almost fully to alcohol free beers.
Got any recommendations for good German ones? The market in the UK has been improving a lot but I do still think a lot of them taste like socks, I'd be interested in trying some more high-quality German options if I can find them over here (Aldi/Lidl probably my best bet).
I like Störtebeker Atlantic Ale, IPA style beer. Very drinkable. Available in most super markets and Späti's (late night shops). Here in Berlin there's also the Brlo Nakid which is similar in taste.
If you want a pils style beer, Jever Fun is pretty hoppy. Krombacher has a decent 0.0 beer as well. A bit on the sweet side for me but I have that sometimes. I also recall seeing a beer that was labelled as Feinherb at some point that was pretty tasty. The exact name escapes me.
Several of the Bavarian beer hall style helles beers now also come in alcohol free versions. Very drinkable. They taste very similar. Bayreuther is one that you might find in some shops.
Many of the Hefeweizen varieties also exist in alcohol free versions and are pretty drinkable. Most places will have that available.
Not German but some bars now have Guinness 0.0 in cans. Haven't seen that in the supermarket but it's a near drop in replacement for normal Guinness as far as I'm concerned and I tend to order that when I see it available.
I stopped drinking alcohol a few years ago but I still enjoy going out with friends who do drink. Mostly people barely notice what other people drink. And the lack of a hangover after a good night sleep is a nice bonus. Although you can overdo it. I always joke about all of the downsides of drinking beers without any of the upsides.
Erdinger Alcoholfrei was a low alcohol German "health drink" before it was popular - has been around for about 25 years. It's fairly available in the UK.
I don’t know where you live but here in the UK and in Europe you can find all sorts of beer from 0 to 5% (and more of course), even in local supermarkets or draft in a pub. And yeah the 0% taste bad, but a 0.5 to 3% can be great, I’m sure you could find some online if you’re willing to, search for “table beer”, “small beer” or just low alcohol beer.
And in terms of non alcoholic beer, “lucky saint” tastes great (0.5%) and is very popular in the UK, lots of pub have it on tap.
In the UK it's common to have 3.4% beer/ale (for ABV >= 3.5% the duty is higher) but there are little options between 3.4% and <=0.5% (alcohol free). I find 3.4% to be a good trade-off between the taste and the alcohol content. I do drink Lucky Saint occasionally but find it less pleasant than various 3.4% ales.
One of the things I miss the most (on a daily basis the most) about the UK is the beer. What you're suggesting just doesn't exist in the USA. Really and truly doesn't.
(Though, as others in this thread point out, NA beers are more common, and better, than they used to be. They're not the same thing, though.)
i am in Paris, and I don't see much variety. Obviously there is so much more choice in big hypermarkets, but I don't go there daily, unlike my local, 30sqm store next my apartment
The French beer scene has improved over the last 10 years but yeah, it's still quite limited in terms of selection. When I was first visiting there really wasn't much at all outside of Belgian beers, though I've since had a few very good beers from Paris and other parts of the north of the country. Usually only finding them in larger markets, though, as you say.
The UK's beer scene is wildly different to the rest of Europe, and not something that we've managed to export very well. Hell, we could even export cask ale (rare outside of the UK) to Paris without it spoiling these days, yet nobody really does. Whether it's due to taste or the awkwardness of casks I don't know, but I do think it would meet with success in Paris if someone did it properly. Not all beer has to be refrigerated and fizzy. We have so many varieties that you just don't get with fizzy keg beer, and much of it notably weaker in alcohol content. Some examples:
Mild at ~2.5% (made from reusing the materials used to make Bitter), Session at ~3.5%, Bitter at ~4%, Best Bitter at ~5% etc. IPAs are the hot thing even over here now but we get notably more variations in those than most places too.
I'd be curious to know from anyone in Germany if they have equivalents to these sorts of categories, as what we get from Germany over here tends to all be about the same strength.
Due to ADHD meds I do now have to drink less, and the best non-alcoholic beer I've found so far is Guinness 0%. I'm not a massive Guinness drinker, it's alright but there are other stouts I prefer, but the 0% version is surprisingly close to "real" Guinness and has none of those sock-y flavours that most non-alcoholic beer has.
It is indeed a completely different scene, which is genuinely interested in variety.
It's a bit of a cliche but you really can split Europe into "beer country/wine country/spirits country". France, Italy, Spain and Germany west of the Rhine are wine country. Munich is clearly beer country. And Germany has focused on perfecting a very narrow set of light beers, if you want diversity of taste that's all in the wines. Similarly you're not going to get Parisians interested in beer diversity when they have French wine to argue about.
(It is possible that climate change will shift this; England is starting to produce a few pretty good wines)
Guinness 0% is fantastic. Unlike a lot of brewers the Guinness company were very keen to retain their standards rather than slop out an inferior product to tick a box.
It is. Actually the best candidates for 0% seems to be the IPA beers as the bitterness adds this little "punch" classic zero alcohol beers seems to suffer from.
The US market is having a boom of craft NA beers and many are really good. Athletic, Go Brewing, and Sober Carpenter are my main go tos. Guinness 0.0 scratches an itch, but I find it a little sweet. The NA Corona with a lime slice is almost indistinguishable from the original. Strangely I find the Stella NA very good (I don't normally drink the regular Stella).
If you like sour beers my experience is they are nearly identical to their native counterparts.
I generally find the breweries that focus completely on NA beer better than existing players who are adding NA to their line up.
In the twin cities, one big brewery, Bauhaus, went out of business briefly and got bought and reopened by ABV, a company that specializes in NA, alcohol-adjusted, and THC beverages, https://www.bauhausbrewlabs.com/blog/Blog%20Post%20Title%20O... . Now you can get beer in full strength, session, NA, and THC. It seems like a sign of the times, but I'm happy to have more choices and as I get older I don't feel like drinking the strong IPAs like I used to.
In the US market, at least, the quality has improved dramatically over the past few years. Several established breweries now produce alcohol-removed versions of existing beers, with varying degrees of success - but in general my experience is that alcohol-free dark beers work better, the increased maltiness does a better job of hiding what's missing. IPAs and lagers can end up tasting somewhat thin compared to the normal version.
There's a few things I miss about the UK, and one of them is easy availability of beer that's less than 5%. Unfortunately that seems to have been creeping upwards - the shift to craft keg (rather than cask) beer seems to have been accompanied by moving more in the direction of US-style stronger beers. Several breweries do still produce milds that are in the <3% range, but it's increasingly hard to find them, even in pubs that used to be reliable suppliers. It's interesting how cultural this is.
Real ale has plenty of lower alcohol percentage options:
My faves are Harvest Pale 3.8% and Our House 3.4%
I also like mild which is often <=3%
0% Guinness is the only beer I would say that matches the taste of alcohol based beer. The others can be ok, but taste too malty, the flavour is off somehow. Also having 2 or more none alcohol beers seems to also make me feel "hungover" in a way, maybe due to additives.
It might be worth it to check out what the market offers. Here in Germany lots of well known brands have started to cater to the non-alc consumers for the last few years. I like eg. Andechser Hell alkoholfrei. The increased competition resulted in some good nonalc beers from reputable wellknown brands
Guiness Zero is my go to for a sipping beer when I'm actually in a pub. I like a pine needles and lemon IPA when it's very cold but they get a bit much when you're having a few over a long evening.
It used to be true for all non-alcoholic beers in Sweden but it is not true anymore, do it is very possible that all non-alcoholic beers are actually bad where they live. Or they just base their comment on old data.
Others have me ruined that NA beers are pretty decent these days. But I've also taken to literally watering down my beer. I'll pour half a can and fill the other half of the glass with water and ice. Then later do the same with the other half. Still tastes decent, but really cuts down on the alcohol.
I think the trend has been a small (and making shrinking) contingent of alcoholics/"beer enthusiests" that are the backbone of the beer industry, and they always lean towards favoring higher alchohol
I’ve recently been in Spain and the non-alcoholic beer was great. To be fair I can’t remember the last time I’ve had alcoholic beer because of the same reasons many people mentioned already, so maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to it.
Can recommend: Mash Gang, We Can Be Friends, Erdinger 0% and I actually quite enjoy Peroni 0% on a summer day. I’m also told that Guinness 0% is pretty good - but I’m not a big Guinness drinker.
I've started drinking malt beer. I think it's basically pre-ferment beer, so it's non alcoholic and a bit sweet. I like to mix it with Sprite Zero, something like 3 parts malt beer to 2 parts sprite. It's also good on its own.
It's delicious and alcohol free, it does have a lot of calories but mixing it with calorie free soda gets you a bit more bang for your calorie buck so to speak.
It’s weed. A whole cohort of people and kids are no longer drinking alcohol (like they did) or never really started because THC and/or CBD is now legal in vapes, gummies, drinks.
I visited Charleston and was surprised they’ve only legalized THC insofar as THC drinks are available at bars. But a lot of the young people were drinking cans of it instead of spiked seltzer, which was the only alcohol anyone was holding. No beer, no wine.
Similarly: they all were smoking computers—not a single analog cigarette in sight. Tobacco farmers in shambles?
Those don't contain tobacco, nor nicotine derived from tobacco. I'd be surprised if tobacco farming was still lucrative, except maybe the fine stuff for cigars, but that was always a relatively small market compared to cheap cig tobacco.
It's also the economy. Everything is expensive. Young people are less successful than ever before (at no fault of their own). When it costs $10 a beer with tax and tip, most young people simply can't afford to do that with any regularity.
It's also also competition. In 1970, your option was to stay home and watch one of three TV channels and that's it. Now, your options are literally to watch any movie ever made, watch any TV show ever made, or play any game ever made... all connected with your friends online.
It is a part of it, but it's not just weed. I would argue the economy is the most impactful factor here.
European wine merchants periodically produce gluts of wine. Supposedly it was so bad wine batches were thrown away or poured into drains (doubtless a wondrous occurrence for the drunks passed-out there!)
They can heat the grapes and sell the juice, it's fantastic - I just got a 3 l canister of fresh grape juice to drink on the weekend (since it's harvest time for vineyards, fresh from its producer, no additives, no preservatives, not even filtered). The taste is unlike anything
from this world - I'd compare it to liquid honey, which only goes to show what industrally processed stuff the shops are feeding us with.
You're right that some are way too acidic and astringent. Usually the kind that you'd age for longer and have more complexity would make poor juice but excellent wines.
There are plenty of varieties of grapes that do well as juice and wine. It's just the type of wine that you'd age very little because it would lose the acidity and temperament too quickly if aged.
Nah. They're smaller, usually sweeter and have big seeds. I actually prefer the taste of wine grapes, even though they're harder to eat. Just has a few over the weekend. Also the wines that retain the seed or grape skin aroma taste great.
Anyway, wine is about at least 3x more expensive than grape juice so it's better ROI to sell good wine. They could make alcohol free wines, but in my experience everything I've tried sucks, just like alcohol free beer.
Technically yes, but it would be unprofitable to pivot. (Presumably whoever you bought your juice from was planning to make juice, and budgeted accordingly.)
I'm Gen X. I lived my best life in the 80s and 90s, socializing, partying (frat boy years included), with alcohol as the main social lubricant. After Covid, almost everyone in my circle stopped or cut back on going out to bars and drinking, me included. It wasn't the price of drinks. Something about the lockdowns simply rewired the social norms (and our brains).
I feel for the farmers. I still miss a nicely chilled Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc now and then.
The thing is, over lockdown I stopped drinking socially. And then I realized I didn’t miss the feeling of intoxication. And then I realized my sleep got a whole lot better.
And then lockdown loosened, so some friends and I went out for drinks for old times’ sake, and I felt awful, both that evening and the next morning. My tolerance for alcohol is just gone, and I don’t have any particular desire to get it back.
I had the same realisation but before COVID. I had a friend who didn't drink, but he was always the most fun person to be around. I realised you didn't need alcohol, or any drugs, to have a good time. Without alcohol I was funnier, had more and better sex, slept better, and had no hangover the next day. I never looked back really.
Nowadays I'm older and not looking for sex so don't take part in that scene. I would say a few years ago when I would go out there was still some peer pressure to drink and I was considered odd going for non-alcoholic options. But nowadays it's not weird at all and the alcohol-free options are much more numerous and varied. Lime and soda was my go to for years but now I'll partake of an alcohol-free beer or cider.
I found the opposite effect from covid personally as a 'zillennial'. As soon as the lockdowns and 'rule of six' were over the first thing me and my friends did was rent a nice house in the middle of the Welsh countryside and have a massive multi-day party. We all felt that lockdowns had stolen what was left of our early 20s from us and wanted to make up for it!
I often wonder if there's a lot of national differences here, in the UK people for the most part wanted to reverse everything about the covid norms as quickly as possible after Partygate and all the political drama. People are still drinking less but it's because pints cost >£6 now in a lot of places, nothing to do with an outbreak of temperance.
> People are still drinking less but it's because pints cost >£6 now in a lot of places, nothing to do with an outbreak of temperance.
Yep, same over here in central europe/balkans.
Covid came, bars were closed, bars reopened with limited seating, prices went up, tourism restarted, our city center became a tourist trap, prices went up, and higher prices then radiated outside the tourist traps, and well... it doesn't add up anymore.
Sure, college students and highschoolers can buy cheap wine or booze and drink in parks, even in below freezing weather, but sitting in a bar has become very expensive.
As a fellow Gen Xer I identify with this. More and more of my friends drink less and less and when they do they prefer a cocktail instead. I think wine has lost the appeal it used to have in the early 2000s. The cost of a glass of wine in the restaurant doesn't help either. As an ex-avid wine drinker, I would be hard pressed to spend more than $30 of a bottle because of the diminishing difference in incremental quality after that price point.
They might want to consider also making Federweißer. It has less alcohol, is carbonated, sweeter, and fresher. I generally really like it even though I'm not the biggest wine fan.
In Austria we call it Sturm. Especially this time of year people love to drink it, but drinking it in large quantities will cause unwanted bowel movements.
For some reason California wines are significantly more expensive than French (Bordeaux and Bourgogne regions I'm mostly interested in) and Spanish (Rioja) wines that are arguably more reputed, older and more experienced wineries, and I'd argue higher quality.
Yet California wines are VERY expensive. My uninformed hypothesis - French and Spanish winemakers make good wines with cost efficiency, whereas America's wine makers don't. So all things being equal, input costs are higher. I see the same with cider - compare Spanish cider to New York cider, the latter being 50 percent more expensive.
I am not sure where you live but Bordeaux and Bourgogne are regularly the most expensive wines where I live, NYC. With that being said, I can find just about any wine at any price point. Also, pinot's from Oregon are generally half the price and as good as a lot of Bourgogne I've had. Similarly, I've had a lot of great Chardonnays from Cali at a more affordable price point than their Bourgogne counter parts. With that being said, when I go to France, a lot of these French wines end up being half the price or less so it really depends on where you're looking.
Our local wine shop in Burlingame, CA has a very knowledgeable 65 yr old proprietor (30 yrs running this store) who told me that Napa wines are definitely overpriced by 3x.
Because I'm not as particular about region he regularly introduces me to wines from other parts of the world that taste great at a much lower cost.
Same - the local wine shop has yet to fail me when I ask for a recommendation. Given them a price range and either taste preferences or meal pairing, and they have always sent me home with something I enjoyed.
Wine in North America is largely a gate kept rich person thing. It is usually not mass production wine, but what little amount of grapes grow go into weird wine makes that they then mark up as if it is nectar from god.
But that said, there is dirt cheap California wine brands, like barefoot.
Portuguese wine and also olive oil are super high quality. In my country price wise it's on par with Italy/Spain/France. But make no mistake it's also on par quality wise.
Some of the olive oils have their own unique profiles and i also really like the lighter wines from portugal.
I had a great English red at a winery, I don't remember what it was unfortunately, and I was shocked when they told me the price of the bottle. It was 35 pounds a decade ago. I think it must be due to input and manufacturing cost efficiency that English and American wines that are equivalent are so much pricier than established old world wines.
My understanding from wine people is that European vineyards tend to be really old with the owners owning the land outright. Californian vineyards tend to be younger with the owners still paying off debt used to purchase the land. This just adds a large overhead cost to US wines.
That said, there are oodles of wines from the new and old world at every price point. If you want to spend $500 a bottle to get something from France, Spain, or California you can. If you want to spend $13 a bottle to get something pretty decent from France, Spain, or California you can.
I don't think this is the generational reasons this article is making it out to be.
We would drink our share of Californian wines, but after the trump trade war, war on Iran, and everything he's done to destabilize the global economy... We decided to stop buying anything American.
Alcohol consumption was already in decline before the massive increase in GLP-1 drug use. As someone who used Mounjaro, I think that's only the tip of the iceberg.
When on these drugs, you simply have no desire for such things, and I'm a beer and wine lover. Now that I've stopped, I'm slowly drinking again, but I feel my taste has changed.
I don't know if it was the drugs or the time that passed, but I simply can't drink or have the same desire as before (it could be my age, too, lol).
My experience as well. GLP-1 removed the spark that alcohol has always given off when it hit my bloodstream. As a lifelong over-drinker, it was incredible to have a few sips of a martini and basically think 'meh, whatever'.
> while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns
My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life, and drinking remains a social habit for the most part at a younger age. While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
It's a nice claim to say they are more responsible, but it tells an incomplete story.
I don't think the science is settled, but the idea that there's a lot more to do at home to stay occupied and entertained rather than going outside is factually true.
When I was growing up, there were only a handful of channels and then cable. Compared to what we have now, that was the Dark Ages. There's so much you can do on a screen now that's compelling.
Infinite scrolling on Shorts, YouTube, video games, social media, hanging out with people online, chatrooms—combine that with Uber Eats, and you can do whatever you want.
The one thing that will make you want to go out is, of course, meeting someone to have sex with, but that's become weaponized, especially for young adults.
Boys being called creepy and predatory for making the wrong move was always an issue, but now you can be shamed online with a video as proof. Why take the risk when you can meet somebody online?
One big problem is a camera in everyone’s pocket together with a culture of posting everything online.
In an environment like that getting drunk just isn’t very good for your life/career. Even something as small as going to the dance floor when you are not really good at it takes a lot more from you when there is 5 cameras recording you the moment you look stupid/funny dancing.
Actually, most women don't like being assaulted, regardless of the attractiveness of the assaulter. Additionally, this is true of humans generally, not just women.
It's really gross that you think of women as so alien and inhuman.
The above statement can be read as disagreeing with the validity of the statement. IDK why OP would try to refute a meme's existence and not the sentence the meme semes to be supporting. Why did you believe that was their intent?
If you like reading sci-fi, I’d really recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) to get some perspective on the extreme of a life where everything you do is potentially visible to any and everyone around you.
what i've derived from my north american anecdata is that any kind of flirtation or even just talking to a stranger about a neutral topic is increasingly automatically graded as creepy. I'd say the social fabric has simply degraded to the point that people have forgotten how to talk to one another, social atrophy i guess. In my northern europe experience women deflect attention with much less fearfulness, and I'd say people just have much higher trust towards one another.
I'm too old, and my kids too young, so the current landscape is foreign to me.
As an outside observer, could it be that manosphere influence has an undue effect on young mens behavior, which (if true) would indeed be creepy for a lot of (most?) women, regardless if the execution is awkward or not.
I was certainly awkward in my teens/young adulthood, but in my singular experience, the maturity and confidence didn't come from acting cocky or showing off, but just treating anyone I had an interest in as a person first and foremost, and being comfortable and even open about my awkwardness and shortcomings.
That did wonders. Also accepting that a rejection doesn't mean a personal slight to you, nor a failure in appreciation of you from her, but merely a lack of mutual interest, which is also fine.
My observation is that the young people who do drink aren't going for beers and wines, which are tastes that can take time to acquire, they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
Getting Gen-z to even get close enough to the glass to smell a nice red is a challenge. And when they do, they seem to recoil rapidly.
Lord Byron famously had a tame pet bear at university; he did it because the rules forbade pet dogs explicitly. The police state has been going for a while :)
Apparently until recently there was no rule about skinning bears in the dorms at Cornell. Kids at college can still be kids, at least until the administration catches wind of it
There was no police involved. The police state attitude verbiage used by the OP refers to the constant monitoring of children and teens, by parents or other guardians, using things such as Apple FindMy to the point where teens can’t be mischievous to the degree they were able to in the past.
There’s also the implication that the repercussions are worse.
> My observation is that the young people who do drink aren't going for beers and wines, which are tastes that can take time to acquire, they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
Born in 1999, I qualify as GenZ. All my peers drink beer, which is unsurprising given the strong cultural presence. But more and more people have been moving to alcohol free beer, which is becoming more and more widespread. Loads of breweries reacted and started with alcohol free beers, even the ones you would have never expected, like Augustiner Bräu in Munich.
Pretty much all surveying data for my home country for the last few years suggests that GenZ is just drinking less alcohol overall. While there probably are some shifts within the consuming population, that does not fully explain the shift away from the alcoholic staples.
> they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
Not surprising, sweetness literally mutes palate sensitivity. Genzers are the most sugar addicted generation, from a very young age. It would not surprise me to see research in some future that this massive early life sugar exposure comes with muted development of taste.
There's untold levels of chemicals in wine. Organic wine is BS in Europe, organic vineyards actually use more chemicals like giant quantities of copper sulphate. The US is actually a lot better than Europe in this regard.
Source: My father owned a vineyard in France before he keeled over with a subarachnoid haematoma after drinking 3 glasses of Rose at lunchtime.
And these things were cause and effect by some proof? Because there are plenty people who drink a bottle of white, red and/or rose for lunch here their entire lives to old age.
The point is the chemical levels in the wine. The anecdote about my father is just that. Please don’t trivialise that just to point score, it’s bad taste.
I used the anecdote to illustrate I have some experience in the wine industry, having worked hands on for a few years. My father studied chemistry at Cambridge so his understanding of wine chemistry is, or was, expert level.
I’d say the burden of proof is on you though, can you supply epidemiological evidence that wine isn’t harmful to health, if you’re going to advocate for the alcohol industry?
> Please don’t trivialise that just to point score, it’s bad taste.
Apologies; that was not my intention; I was reacting to your chemicals claim only.
I am not advocating; I am saying that I don’t believe it’s the other chemicals, it’s just alcohol, which is the poison in wine. They have 0.0 wine here which is just real wine with the alcohol removed after; that has then, I assume, the same chemicals and drinking that is harmful?
> I’d say the burden of proof is on you though, can you supply epidemiological evidence that wine isn’t harmful to health, if you’re going to advocate for the alcohol industry
I do not think anyone would argue that alcohol consumption is good for your health, regardless of what kind of alcohol.
I'm not really making any strong claims except that people should look into the chemicals in wine. It's a complicated story. Unfortunately many of the USDA links are dead so this is the best evidence I have for the difference in wine standards in Europe vs the US.
But is that alcohol or the other chemicals was my point; GP seem to imply it was the other chemicals; I doubt that. But yes, no alcohol would on average make you live longer.
It'll be decades before we know the true effects of the chemicals other than alcohol that are evidently present in wine, but TFA is known to pose serious health risks.
Not the parent, but I have heard of this as well.[0] The advice in the article is to try to drink wine that is 2010 or older.
But I do raise my eyebrow at the suggestion that US wine is somehow in a better situation and am not inclined to believe it unless someone provides sources.
[0]
"Alarming’ increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines"
Thanks, it'd be interesting if there was an empirical testing study that reflected how much the labeling prevents the chemical contamination like the one observed in europe.
I told an anecdote for illustrative purposes and made no explicit links. Others have assumed the link however.
My purpose was to draw people's attention to some lesser known aspects of the wine industry which I think are consequential, and I was illustrating I have some insignts into this that people that haven't worked in the industry probbaly don't.
Not the parent, but I have heard of this as well.[0] The advice in the article is to try to drink wine that is 2010 or older.
But I do raise my eyebrow at the suggestion that US wine is somehow in a better situation and am not inclined to believe it unless someone provides sources.
[0]
"Alarming’ increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines"
Most notably the chemical alcohol is known to cause all sorts of health problems and is present in wine.
If you are going to talk about "chemicals", you should be more specific. Most chemicals are harmless, some aren't. Most likely alcohol is the most toxic chemical in wine by a wide margin.
You could also have just glanced at the rest of the thread where I've given far more specific evidence.
I'm rather glad I've drawn people's attention to the issue, despite having to endure extremely patronising comments like yours.
Second, I clearly have skin-in-the-game here because you did read the first comment, so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one (well done that was clever in 2015) can go forth and multiply.
> You could also have just glanced at the rest of the thread where I've given far more specific evidence.
You have not. Maybe you think you have, but just linking to the name of a chemical is not a cogent argument that that chemical in the quantities present in wine, are harmful in any way, and certainly not an argument for it being more harmful than the primary ingredient.
> having to endure extremely patronising comments
Apparently not patronising enough...
> so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one
You really believe that alcohol is equivalent to water in its toxicity?
Look, i'm sorry for your loss. However you are basically spreading pseudo-science here. Doing so has potential to harm a lot of other people too.
My grandfather used to burn sulphur strips to clean the glass demijohns. I guess this is why most wine carry a sulphate allergy label these days. Apart from this, I don't recall any other "chemical" being used, other than sugar.
Of course, this was decades ago and today would be called "artisanal" wine making.
> I guess this is why most wine carry a sulphate allergy label these days.
Partly. There is some natural level of sulfites present in wines - very dependent on the terroir, and then the rest comes during the manufacturing process; some sulfites may be added directly so the wine does not spoil.
There are wines that do not contain any added sulfites and even then may cause trouble to the sensitive persons if the sulfur content of soil is naturally high. Some manufacturers therefore also add info about total measured sulfite content to the label.
And nowadays, not only demijohns or wooden barrels are used to hold wine; of course stainless steel vessels, but also concrete vessels and even things like the Georgian qvevri underground clay vessels or amphorae are having a comeback.
You can't generalise from one wineyard in one country, but you know that. And France is hardly an organic wine leader.
Copper sulphate is a fungicide used for centuries and is pretty safe (so safe that my chemical engineer father was willing to use it in his otherwise completely sans-chemicals garden). Organic wine not only does not use (other) fungicides and herbicides; it also does not use other chemicals and processes in later stages of winemaking.
Before 2004 Germany had a %vol limit for selling alcohol to 16 year olds. In 2004 they changed the law such that it is not based on percentage, but whether it contains distilled alcohol to prevent under 18 year olds from drinking sweet alcopops, which apparently was a big thing back then.
US politicians have been at war against teenage drinking since the 1980s when the minimum drinking age was raised. Gen Z social trends helped it along, but this is the desired outcome of bipartisan policy going back decades.
With US legal drinking age being 21, this eats into drinking at university/drinking after work, which is very much where bulk of socializing for young adults happens. Can't imagine it's not hugely affecting adulthood habits.
All thanks to crashing the economy and making the act of spending $15 on a low quality beer untenable for young adults giving 60+% of their income to rent.
Alcohol tax would have been a simpler and much less destructive means of achieving such a goal, but I guess breweries can't lobby when everything else is collapsing too.
When they introduced the higher alcohol tax here in Australia back in 2006(ish), all it did was push us to find ways to make it ourselves. Went from cheap to unbelievably cheap but completely unregulated. Who knows what the alcohol content of some of that stuff was. There are some vague fuzzy nights from that period.
since when did everyone, ditch personal responsibility to the drain ?
I understand that social media platforms are hardcore unethical with the way they prioritize screentime and addiction
Over our wellbeing even at the cost of knowingly decreasing our attention spans with all the Shorts / Tiktok Algorithms.
But we must also take personal responsibility, it costed me $2 (/year) to buy a screen time addiction removal app that works for my iPhone, iPad and even my linux machine with firefox browser, and to lock down every damn social media app in both intervention and absolute blocking ways, and it worked great !
I moved from a screen time addiction of 9h / day to just using my phone in total for 2h out of which most of that is Phone Calls, Apple Music, and Booking Ubers.
I was able to set free, and my life was better for it, because of my personal responsibility towards my own life.
It doesnt cost much / almost nothing, to reclaim your life back, there will always be people / organizations trying to screw you over, they have always existed since time millenium , be it corrupt empires, cults and anti-social religions, horrible food, bad peer pressure in school leading to poor influence, bad habits picked up from parents/elders in a kid's life.
The only consistent way that humans have been able to survive, thrive and personally excel in their own lives, against all odds of their society, family, and their sorroundings.
Is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. I sometimes feel many of us have given up on any outlook of fixing ourselves, i see it with my friends and my loved ones too, we have to make personal responsibility, popular again, if we want a better future.
Personal responsibility is what you focus on when you are talking to an individual. If you are trying to make your life better, or someone you know's life better, it is great to talk about personal responsibility and making choices for your life.
But that doesn't apply when we are talking about society wide shifts in behavior. It isn't like people suddenly got genetically better or worse at taking personal responsibility. If suddenly a lot fewer people are making healthy decisions, that isn't because we just happened to birth a bunch of people who don't take personal responsibility. Something has changed. Individuals have a lot of control over their own lives, but at a society level all of those individual decisions average out, and you are left with a representation of the effect of society.
Yes people can get swept up in things and be unaware of downstream consequences of their actions, but you can also become informed and decide to change your behavior, find ways to mitigate damage, or communicate with others the damage/solution. How easy to wave your hand at the government or a corporate entity and abdicate responsibility, the parent is correct; personal accountability is faster and more effective than government regulations that also have knock on effects. My regulation example would be how cars in north america became less popular when fuel economy regulations were applied to them, but not SUVs creating the monster car epidemic we all live in.
We crossed over the "personal responsibility" rubicon somewhere around 2016 at the latest. Law is finally catching up in 2026 where Meta is settling/losing multiple lawsuits over the effects of addictive algorithms that caused mental anguish (or something like that. I don't remember the exact language).
Since we're at the legal stage, I hope we can finally get to a stage where such algorithms are treated as seriously as cigarettes. But society moves slowly, because the powers that profit from this pay to push back on regulation.
I and virtually everyone in my generation have been constantly lectured throughout almost entire education about the dangers of smoking and drinking. As a result, while we smoke and drink heavily, it's not even close to our parents. So it makes perfect sense that the next generation, who were not only lectured their whole life but also didn't grow up surrounded by people smoking everywhere and drinking all the time, overwhelmingly avoided picking up these habits at all.
My take is that people “these days” just don’t want to put in the time, money or effort in socializing, especially with new groups of people. Be it dating, meetups or other social gatherings with strangers, it’s about giving as little as you can, in case the event turns out to be a dud. Why risk paying for 2 beers when you could buy one tea for less?
Now, how can I be so sure? Because I’ve been starving at some of these events, whereas others can seemingly call a single slice of pizza dinner.
There’s most definitely a health aspect in there too, but I don’t think it paints the whole story.
I dunno. I don't drink, but I do put time and effort to socialize.
It's just not related to drug consuming acts and more about sports, poker, board games, etc.
I believe that drug-related communications are flawed and closer to animal level than to actually joyful ones. It's better to have a maturity and social skills to communicate, joke and maintain a conversation with interesting people without stimulators.
I'm not from the US though so it's not about the US social scene which is mainly discussed here.
> closer to animal level than to actually joyful ones
That's exactly the point. To experience animalistic joy, rather than the socially-conditioned one.
> It's better to have a maturity and social skills
That's a very silly argument because it doesn't take into account the fact that a day has 24 hours and also people have different natural abilities. Imagine telling a kid with Down Syndrome "come on, you can do it, PhD in physics ain't that difficult".
Communication is a skill like everything else. Having a constant workaround just reduces your ability to be good at it. Why would a healthy young adult make his own skills worse?
You can either get short-term gains with long-term worsening of your daily life by being incapable of new connections and genuine communications or cut the short-term low-level improvements, suffer for a year or two, learn a bit and have a better life for years to come.
It's like going to gym or do other sports. It's often hard and unpleasant at the start, but the more you're doing it, the fitter you are and the more benefits you bring to yourself in the long-term.
You don't understand my core premise that given finite lifespan and finite attention, one can learn only a finite amount of things. People have shit to do and they cannot fit one more responsibility into their calendars. Not to mention that it takes two to tango so if you want to be fun and interesting while sober, you also need to convince your friends to also be sober so it's not all awkward.
It's really difficult to square the circle that being sober improves your communication skills long-term yet somehow young people have worse communication skills and less friends that previous generations of alcohlics.
> somehow young people have worse communication skills and less friends
I have a feeling that many young people sit behind the screen all the time.
My point doesn't work if you don't even try to socialize. Still have to make an effort and go through the uncomfortable awkward stage when you are shy or lost for words in most interactions.
I know enough no-drinkers who are just fine even with drinking people, that's the matter of empathy and being able to relax and being open without stimulators which is something not a given to people without a practice.
I could see it being a mix of both factors. Cash-strapped antisocial members staying at home, and the more outgoing career-focused gen-z members going out but trying to protect their sleep quality. feel like i know a decent amount of people in both of these buckets
I mean, i am about to marry in about 2 months and have no one to invite as i never was able to socialize with anyone outside of school (and since then 5 years passed) and if they mostly have a unhealty relation to alcohol so i don't want to do something with them.
I have like 1-2 friends that i can smoke with and also only know them because of that, we game in out free time and only meet to hand over some herbs.
I would love to go out and meet new peers but i cannot without drinking and after spending like 60-70% on rent there is not enough to spend 6-8€ on a WATER.
Alcohol is one of the worst recreational drugs. Internet natives grew up with more access to information and less draconian drug laws than their predecessors.
In the 90s, MDMA got senators’ panties in a twist. Now, there are multiple 100k+ MDMA-focused events in the western USA annually.
I suspect this is temporary. I think eventually we'll see a wave of laws outlawing weed and psychedelics (again), and then alcohol will make a strong comeback. Booze has been part of civilization since the beginning. There’s even a theory that grains were domesticated so people could brew beer first, as opposed to making bread first. Also, there's talk that the new generation understands that alcohol is bad for your health, so they are stopping, but the reality is that we've known about alcohol's issues forever, yet people have not stopped. No way this will last.
I doubt weed will be made illegal again. It also has a history dating back thousands of years and even in places where weed is still treated as dangerous as things like heroin, has failed to really control its usage. It grows in pretty much any climate and can be consumed in "raw" form, so supply control is impossible.
It's still illegal federally in the US! It's illegal in many European countries and the UK. The places which have legalized it exist in a fragile state that could very easily be washed away with a moral panic again.
I would be more willing to bet on someone trying Prohibition 2.0 again.
This is a shoot from the hip idea. Speaking to younger folks, it seems to be much more cultural/social change rather than anything to do with health.
This might be an odd fluctuation to do with the first primarily social media generation? Don't know but that is just how I have seen it.
You are probably right about banning weed/vapes. They don't have anywhere near the same indoctrination into the structures of commerce and power that alcohol has.
> there's talk that the new generation understands that alcohol is bad for your health, so they are stopping, but the reality is that we've known about alcohol's issues forever, yet people have not stopped. No way this will last.
I never understood this logic. It can absolutely change. Tastes and habits do change in society sometimes forever. Just because people did a thing a long time ago and a tradition has lasted for thousands of years doesn't mean it will continue.
Generally speaking, the longer something has been common the more time it will continue to be common. A fad vs a trend vs a tradition. Of course alcohol use can change. We see several cohorts with very low alcohol consumption. It's just that if we've been doing something for thousands of years, we're likely to continue to do it for thousands of years.
This is far from the first fluctuation of alcohol consumption rates we have data for. This is a major trend that will last decades but not a march to long term 0.
I've read several threads about how cigarettes are making a comeback because it's perceived as more natural or less chemical than vapes. If you care about facts at all you will find it completely wrong and intensely stupid, of course, but you just never know how people will react and then counter-react.
Yes, it happens. It's even happened with alcohol in certain population cohorts. I would just want to see stronger data before predicting alcohol consumption going to zero. Alcohol is a tradition lasting millenniums.
Also fitness. The Covid "sheltered" population is also the Instagram generation, it's easier to get inspired, feel pressure from social media, or find information about how to become muscular. It's at odds with drinking.
Ubiquitous cameras and social media surely play a role. Each and all of your drunk stupidities can and will get recorded and posted to your social group for eternal humiliation.
This I think is the key here. The traits I would associate with Millennials and Gen Z are all related to reacting to being watched all the time. And while alcohol can help a bit with anxiety, zero tolerance for just being a kid breeds a culture where doing anything that can be clipped is a bad idea. Basically, they are boring kids because anything at all that can be used against them is. I really feel sorry for them. If time machines existed and they could see how kids behaved in the past, I think they would destroy all their phones and computers immediately.
A big part of the increases in door costs are from two sources. Lower bar sales and a dramatic increase in the fees for DJs over the last 15 years. Also, taxes from city counsels, higher energy costs (speakers use lots of power), and the youth having less disposable income are also part of it. Basically, its a case of "its not one thing, its everything".
Or it's just bang-for-buck. If a bottle of vodka can be had for anywhere even vaguely in the ballpark of a bottle of wine (and at the grocery store scale, they often are: say, $15-20 for the wine and $20-30 for the vodka), then vodka (and maybe mixers) is gonna deliver a whole lot more intoxication per dollar.
I guess I just wrote a much longer variation of "candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker", eh?
(this is not drinking advice, folks: you'll do plenty more damage plenty faster with liquor, too)
Probably, yeah. N=1 and Europe, but that's what I remember from my university years. Wines were for dating; cheap beers and vodka with cola or juices was for general socializing. Cost was a factor for everyone; cheaper means more people could participate more often.
This generation doesn't know about how to be a proper wino. Go and take a look at the $7.99 1.5L jug bottles of carlo rossi next time you are in the grocery store. You will notice they are covered in dust. The charles shaw at trader joes still moves though. It's up to 4 buck chuck now.
> ...you'll do plenty more damage plenty faster with liquor, too
I'm skeptical. I don't see how there can be a meaningful difference between a regular-strength sixteen ounce beer and one shot of regular-strength vodka mixed in with slightly less than sixteen ounces of water. [0]
I do agree that -because you're drinking far less fluid- it's far easier for those who aren't monitoring how much they drink to get massively intoxicated when drinking liquor rather than beer or wine.
[0] ...other than taste, that is. Sixteen ounces of dilute vodka-water wouldn't be a joy to drink.
I don't see people carefully mix their liquor in the exact same proportions as beer and then drinking at exactly the same rate, so your argument is about as relevant to real world drinking as "if you mix 5% strength beer with four parts water it's basically not going to get you drunk". With or without normal amounts of (typically sweet) mixer, spirits tend to lend themselves to faster consumption and the carbonation in beer also has the property of giving you that buzzy feeling (and that vomity feeling) earlier so you don't feel quite so much inclination to top up.
One or more shots mixed with a small quantity of orange juice, typically served at between two and four times the alcohol concentration of beer and typically consumed at equivalent speed. What the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
Sure, I read your second paragraph, but as I pointed out in my own post, you might as well express skepticism that people harm themselves faster with beer than with shandy whilst treating not mixing beer with four parts water as edge case irresponsibility rather than how people actually drink it. Every drink is equally safe, diluted down enough...
> One or more shots mixed with a small quantity of orange juice...
I used to be a serious drinker and remain an abstinent alcoholic, but your description obligates me to ask "What the fuck is wrong with kids these days?".
> What the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
One shot of vodka in a standard-breakfast-sized glass of orange juice.
> Sure, I read your second paragraph...
I -uh- think that whomever you tend to drink with is way more hardcore than I was... and that's frightening.
Tbf I don't know many young people who'd pound screwdrivers. Like IDK how different things were in the past but back when I was in university (right up until covid) the drink of choice was straight liquor plus a chaser. Many a party were had around handles of whiskey, vodka, or rum with limited "mixing in".
It was just outright more cost effective and as college students we just didn't have money for the alternative so most of the time it was hard liquor and maybe once a week we'd go out to drink and then it was mostly rail liquor mixed drinks or outright shots and shooters.
> Tbf I don't know many young people who'd pound screwdrivers. ...
Exactly. If you want to get fucked up, you drink it straight, or with minimal flavoring. If you want to drink on the cheap, you prep it in one of many "sane drinking" preparations, like a Screwdriver.
It’s the tech wet dream. Come back from work (where you are doing some manual labor the LLMs cannot automate yet), consume content while the rented rob car takes you to your apartment, get some weed and immerse yourself in your consumption device (phone, tv whatever).
Effectively every non sleeping minute of your life monetized by tech.
Alcohol is a mind-altering drug! And I expect it has worse long-term consequences than quite a few of the other drugs that have become more mainstream recently.
Ketamine is also normally given to humans. It is used in hospitals as a sedative/anesthetic, and also in depression treatment.
Used responsibly it's perfectly safe. Much less harmful than alcohol. I don't know why people assume that something is unsafe just because we give it to horses. Do you think people want to harm their horses?
This is an argument I have had on both sides. One side demonized it, the other said it could do no wrong.
No, weed is not a one way path to a death sentence as you become a raving Satanist! But it also isn't harmless and there are things to keep an eye on, just because it doesn't kill you doesn't mean it gets the all clear.
If you want to do it, go for it, but please be aware of the potential issues.
They are significant but so are those of alcohol. Most data indicates weed is safer. (This study puts it at about half in terms of harm to the user: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285843262_Drug_harm... . Alcohol ranks the highest in terms of harms to others but that is also a function of how widely it is used)
looking from the tail end of the generation, many of my friends ( and also I ) were led to believe somehow that things like marijuana, psychedelics, non-Alcohol have such low consequences that are entirely a rounding error compared to alcohol. which is ...
Idk, when I was young I was drinking heavily, today I drink some beers and smoke weed and I feel I’m much better for it. It doesn’t ruin the next day and I can do more things. But you can definitely overdo it. Psychedelics definitely can mess with your head, though, if not careful.
I have a couple friends in their 60s who drank a single glass of wine every day, for decades. Then, they decided to stop. They were amazed at how much better they felt.
Cannabis today is much stronger than it was in the 70s.
In places in the US where it’s now been decriminalized, it’s a completely different beast from what it was in the 70s. So much so that the potency of the plants kind of isn’t even relevant anymore for typical users. It’s a far cry from when I was a kid and there was peer pressure to keep taking hits from a joint of unknown potency at too quick a pace to do any sort of dose control.
The people I know who are using it are buying it as tablets and gummies that come in 1mg increment doses, and taking exactly as much as they want to have, which typically isn’t much.
Vape pens are presumably also more consistent and predictable, and seem to be taking over. I can’t even remember the last time I smelled actual weed smoke.
It actually strikes me as much more healthy than alcohol culture, where dose control can still be a problem because it’s hard to tell how many units of alcohol the bartender put in your cocktail, and driving home afterward is still quite normalized.
It's still inconsistent as fuck. There's no real industry standards and analysis. The same gummies from the same pack bought at a dispensary can vary wildly in my experience. Pens are a bit more consistent. But yeah not as variable as the bathtub gravity bong rips of random weed that people got from who knows where.
Yes I find this a big difference in modern weed culture and alcohol culture. At my age most of my friends know their tolerance for weed quite well and we usually keep low dosage edibles around just to offer for friends who consume weed a couple times a year.
While I don't drink that much anymore, when I do I just kinda have a murky mental binder of how strong a drink is at a given venue I've visited before but even then it's very unsophisticated.
I think their argument is that while it's stronger (and it is), it's also more predictable and has safer and more predictable delivery mechanisms.
Also, there are high grade derived products that do exactly what's on the label.
For an example of reasonable use: if you want to lower anxiety a bit, which is a primary driver of alcohol use, you can now reliably get a high CBT strain, or CBT gummies, or CBT vapes, and they are generally less dangerous and less addictive than other chemical solutions.
This would also hold for decriminalising party drugs. Most of the fentanyl deaths for instance are in people that didn't even know they're having fentanyl.
Yeah, more or less. From what I can tell few people really want to just smoke the plant anymore. That makes the THC concentration in the plant itself less relevant to a discussion of potential harm of cannabis consumption. Because there’s some amount of remove between the production yield of the raw material and the potency of the finished consumer product.
You can make an argument in the other for alcohol. Yeast can only ferment up to a certain alcohol concentration and then they die. But that doesn’t tell us much about the potency of consumer alcohol products because we have a variety of manufacturing processes for controlling alcohol concentration. These it’s less common, outside of home production, to just accept whatever unpredictable thing the yeast are doing and call it good.
Potency is an interesting subject because in theory one should have consume less amounts over the same time period for the same effect. In other words, smoking one potent joint, while carrying its own risks, is probably healthier than smoking n > 1 joints to get a similar effect.
Cannabis, the literal plant, is strong than the 70s, but it's not like humans haven't been making concentrates (hash, resins, etc.) for 1000s of years.
Indeed. Alcohol is so much more dangerous and damaging to peoples lives and the lives of those around them that it doesn't even compare. Alcohol would never be legal if discovered today. Compared to alcohol the risks of cannabis are a rounding error.
But that's only because alcohol is so incredibly dangerous. There is real risk with inhaling particulates and burning gases into your lungs. And it should not be ignored. It's just that compared to the lives ended by alcohol it is a rounding error and that makes it seem safe. Neither are.
Alcohol is deeply deeply ingrained in society. (Almost) universally. It has been for thousands of years. I just don't think you can extricate history and culture from how we set policy and views on alcohol.
While it may be rational to try to lump it with other newer dangerous substances, removing alcohol from humanity would be full on cultural erasure for many places. Not to mention to total destruction of entire industries that people's livelihoods depend on.
I guess a way to think of it is - if it was part of culture for 1000s of years it'll probably take at least 100s of years to phase out.
there was some commentary on the amazing regenerative power of the liver on a post here a few days ago to this end. i did a little more homework and the way in which agricultural civlization and the ability of the liver to process ethanol evolved in parallel is profound. some settlement had a bumper crop of wheat enough to ferment over the winter and they were like, sheeeeeit and then the liver was like sheeeeeeeit
we've been collectively alcoholic for 15000 years, turning the body's chemical filtration plant into the body's largest organ that is literally called the liver, and we're supposed to give it up in 20 years? bosh. flimshaw
I agree. Individuals have the right to chose to damage their bodies if they wish. And laws already exist covering hurting other people while irresponsibly intoxicated. I see no reason to try to use state violence to prevent people from hurting themselves with alcohol. This doesn't change that alcohol is a poison and seriously incapacitating compared to say, cannabis.
No they don't. unless you think health care should be singularly the responsibility of the individual and we have no responsibility for caring for the sick or seriously injured even if they have lack the financial resources to cover expenses.
Alcohol is engrained because it was safe to drink because of the process of fermentation. However, it had much lower alcohol content and certaknly the hard liquors we know now were almost never at all drunk.
Your comparing 1-2% alcohol consumed because the regular drinking water was not accessible and unsafe to 7%+ alcohol consumed for recreation. Disengenuous.
Extract a sugary liquid from fruit or malted grain, expose it to the pervasive and random yeast in the air around us and if it doesn't mold over first you'll probably get something in the 8% ABV range before the alcohol waste product inhibits the yeasts' metabolism. With some deliberate cultivation, which humans thousands of years ago figured out, you can selectively breed the yeast slurry in your vessels up to a 11-14% alcohol tolerance. They didn't know the science but they knew the process.
Leave it exposed and you'll eventually get a random acetobacter infection and ta-da, now you have a vat of vinegar. Which would still have utility, but is much less fun.
The 1-2% alcohol drinks were called "small beers" and were the second runnings off the grain that was used to make full-strength beers or barleywines. Humans liked variety.
And people drank water, not just alcoholic small beers, there are depictions of water filters dating back at least 3500 years, and a long history of water purification techniques, and a ton of ancient wells which were dug.
Alcohol is indeed dangerous, but I think it is misleading to compare the number of lives ended by alcohol to the number of lives ended by other recreational drugs just because there is a much larger number of people consuming alcohol. Almost everybody who consumes alcohol is not an alcoholic.
you should go look back at profiling and optimization
if you want to fix the most things with the least effort, you optimize the hot paths. in this case, thats alcohol and tabacco. they have the biggest opportunity
That's dumb though because then you just push people to other things and you will see the same issues arise as consumption increases to alcohol levels and there's a reasonable probability they will be worse. Already the percent of fatal accidents involving active marijuana found in the blood stream is higher than alcohol car fatalities. 40% vs 30%. Homicides show a similar pattern. And marijuana consumption is only 17% vs 54%. All time high for MJ and near all time low for alcohol.
Alcohol is consistently more dangerous statistically than most other things, I doubt lowering consumption is the driving factor behind the patterns you're mentioning.
I optimize the things where I get the most benefit per hour of work. Banning alcohol is so difficult politically that it’s not obvious that this is the best thing to work on to improve public health.
Smoking kills several times more people per year than alcohol use. The CDC attributes 480k to smoking vs 178k from alcohol. People smoking cannibis likely smoke less than those smoking tobacco but it’s not safe. Maybe try edibles instead?
Alcohol is responsible for more deaths and addiction that any other drug in the world.
Not only that, alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood, which in essence means the feeling you get from drinking is brain damage.
Notice how like 90-95% of the tkme when skmeone does something uncharecteristically horrible such as rape, murder of passion, or assault, they are drunk. Is that a coincidence?
That's not even talking about drunk driving, one of the leadings cause for all major traffic accidents in the US.
Prohibition literally started because drunkards were beating their wives, wasting their entire paycheck at the saloon (free lunch), and other savagry so much the women, who couldn't even vote at the time, were so pissed off they created the the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Let's be clear here too, most temperance groups were the biggest supporters of abolition. Only reason abolition didn't work is the government was too lax on enforcement and allowed written doctors notes for alcohol use the basis for evil organizations like CVS and Walgeens that have devestated this country as the distribution arm of the highly lucrative pharmecuetical drug trade.
>alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood
Blood oxygen is quickly and cheaply measured with a pulse oximeter, which shows this to be false. The primary mechanism of action of ethanol is increasing the sensitivity of some GABA receptors (similar to benzodiazepines and barbiturates). But ethanol has very complex pharmacology, which a huge number of other targets. See:
Yup. That original post had several factual errors.
I am not a supporter of alcohol, but I find it kind of funny when some people demonize alcohol (which I agree is bad for one's health and has many negative externalities, but which has been used by our societies for millennia and its effects are relatively well understood, at least phenomenologically from extensive experience) and drop it in favor of much less understood and often much more dangerous drugs.
But that is also because it has been used much more often than other drugs. Don't get me wrong, I agree that alcohol has some very bad effects. But if you ban (or decrease consumption of) alcohol, but that gets compensated by an increase in the usage of other drugs (which I am not saying is inevitable), you might be trading a bad situation for something far worse.
A personal anecdote. My extended family has a long history of substance abuse and addiction. Of course, historically the substance so abused has mostly been alcohol (and tobacco, but that is less harmful in this kind of sense), and I saw [both first-hand and second-hand] a lot of direct and indirect effects of it that were very harmful and destructive. But recently, with another family member, I also saw first-hand the effects of addiction to another drug, methamphetamine, with induced psychosis, and I would choose dealing with an alcohol addict over this a thousand times. At least an alcohol addict is unlikely to suddenly decide to murder you, or to jump out of window, or any such mad move, just because some demons tell them or they suddenly realize that you have been an alien or a reptilian all along, or any similar crazy thing [which is actually pretty horrific when you face it in a real life from a close person]. A drunk person is also much more easily defeated physically than somebody who is high on meth and has some psychotic episode. [Though I am aware that alcohol caused or catalyzed many violent attack and murders too, I am not trying to trivialize that.]
In the real world telling people to make the hard choice you support (such as abstinence only stances) makes a large majority dismiss you completely. It’s mostly self-serving sort of advice that might apply to individuals, but we already know you can’t enforce it on a society.
You really. Really really. Need to research the temperance movement and the utter disaster that it was.
You’re regurgitation of propaganda here is so laughably missing the point.
Downvote me if you want but look it up. The temperance movement and prohibition that followed was run by wealthy women who filled their time judging the lower classes and factory owners who wanted to end labor union meetings and continue to underpay workers in horrid conditions while blaming alcohol as the problem.
Easily one of americas worst decisions and propaganda people like you still believe to this day.
You're right, but the idea that "Oh I'm not drinking it's just not healthy" is more common among younger people I've noticed than it was around people who were older when I was very young. I meet many young people whose main two activities are overworking and overly gymming/fitness activities. Such people drink a lot less than normal.
Afaik, they also commit less crimes and get less pregnant as teenagers. They are overall more responsible then the generation that complains about them.
> How do you distinguish responsible character from clinical depression?
By how much work you get done. That's it. You can be the saddest sack of shit in the whole wide world and, as long as you keep being productive, nobody will notice.
At my worst, I kept grinding even though I was one step away from jumping off the nearest bridge so nobody could tell I was this depressed.
We know their attitudes too, yes they are being responsible.
But also, violence, unsafe sex and excessive risk taking are all reactions to mental health problem. People engage in them to make whatever issue they have feel better.
> While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
All of these are cheap. As long as you got a garden and it's legal, growing weed is ridiculously easy - it's literally called weed because it thrives pretty much anywhere. Vapes are much cheaper than cigarettes (eh, we'll see how long that lasts and authorities crack down on shops selling smuggled / greymarket vapes...).
In contrast, going out and getting drunk to the point of getting decently hammered can easily cost you 100€ and more here in Germany, and we have low alcohol taxes...
Anecdotal experience tells me that they're just better at hiding it than previous generations. Gen-z is depressed, and depressed people reach for drugs and alcohol to cope. I think we're going to find that the data on this has been manipulated.
Wine is also sweet and sweetness is unhealthy. Part of the Gen Z crowd that doesn't give a shit about wine is correctly disillusioned with flawed culture. We don't live in a world where you can get by growing grapes and making wine at your small vineyard. It's industrial. There is no bottle of wine actually worth $1000 to anyone with a sense of pragmatism and the fact such expensive wine exists just turns people off from caring about wine. A lot of societal ills come from the fact that we have old people unwilling to change running the world. Gen Z is doing okay considering the rent-laden prison they grew up in.
Scrunching up my face trying to figure out how to respond to this...
I think you are right that a lot of the wine which people consume, the mega industrial mass volume stuff sold in supermarkets, is a bit sweet, although often not by a lot--Josh and Bota Box, two of the biggest brands, have like 5-10 g/L of sugar. Stuff like La Marca Prosecco and Barefoot Pink Moscato is noticeably sweeter.
However, in general, I don't think it's fair to say "wine is sweet". Wine in general is not sweet outside of certain styles that are intended to be so. If you grow grapes, crush them, and ferment them, the fermentation will generally run until the yeast run out of sugar, leaving only trace amounts behind.
I've noticed that a lot of people who don't have that much experience with wine will tend to mis-identify things as sweetness when they're really noticing some other aspect of the wine.
The article mentions this - Canada was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.
I suspect wine is extremely susceptible to this effect too. It’s basically always stocked alongside produce from many other countries, the origin is most of the marketing, and there aren’t really any stand out brands. I’ve probably had a Californian wine before but couldn’t name a single one.
If you own a venue or store and decide to stop stocking American alcohol, someone will probably notice you don’t have Jack Daniel’s but not that you’ve stopped selling Californian wine.
Even if it ends up back on the shelves the damage is done. Many will avoid American products until the day they die, and endeavour to teach their children to do the same.
America doesn't need anything from the rest of the world, or so is claimed, so the rest of the world should not burden itself with purchasing American exports.
The same thing is happening in Marlborough, NZ - the center of the wine industry in New Zealand. (And probably elsewhere in NZ, but Marlborough is where I grew up). All my life, every year has seen more and more vineyards throughout the valley, until a few years ago it began to slow and recently they've actually pulled some out, which is totally unheard of.
If so its been going on for a long time. I remember seeing UK TV ads in the 70's/80's for Paul Mason's Californian Carafes - cheap/mainstream wine. Now I'd say most American wines for sale in Europe are higher end and more expensive.
If you want a cheap bottle of wine it would be New Zealand, Chilean or Spanish
OMG, it's interesting to see how the average person reasons about the world.
You have your pet theory, you, without evidence, decide that every fact you see is confirmation for that theory, so now you believe your theory even more.
I want to say something to make you feel bad about this, but you think I'm telling you that you were right all along.
Do we really need evidence to draw a line between the US's biggest trading partners boycotting the US alcohol industry and a drop in sales in the US alcohol industry? I feel like the only way you don't make that connection is if you're either severely uninformed or so lost down the MAGA rabbit hole you've forgotten the taste of food, the sound of water, the touch of grass...
Do you really go through life seeing confirmation of all your beliefs everywhere, without ever checking?
US consumers spend about $115 Billion annually on wine. Exports to canada are less than 1% of that. I don't see how Canada matters much to the US in general, and specifically it doesn't make sense that a 70% reduction in half a percent of wine sales (that's like 0.4% reduction overall) is a major factor in putting the industry out of business, but you are welcome to look it up yourself or correct me. Keep in mind that US wine sold in canada will have gone through several hands and be heavily taxed, so the amount per bottle getting back to grape growers is a very small percentage of that already tiny percentage.
But of course you won't bother to look it up, you will just roll your eyes and assume US grape growers are being forced out of business because Manitoba's liquor stores are finally flexing their international influence!
Where I live in Canada, it's not even a case of the consumers boycotting the products... they've been ordered to be removed from the shelves by the government. They're not even an _option_ to purchase. I think it's fair to say there's a bit of a cause-and-effect thing going on there when it comes to the impact on American alcohol producers. And when/if they do return to shelves, the general sentiment seems to suggest they still won't sell very well.
The fact that US wine declines more than other wine isn't a theory it's a fact. The reason could have several theories. One is that people are simply boycotting. This is supported by polls etc. But another would be if prices drift apart and a strong dollar makes US wine less attractive relative to (say) French and Italian wines.
As usual the reason overall wine sales would be down e.g. 10% and US wine sales down 20% in a country will be a combination of multiple factors. My pet theory though is that at least for some countries, the boycott factor is the big one.
My parents live in a massive fruit growing region of the country. Just this year, 2 of the major packing firms in the county both declared bankruptcy. It's not just the trade war, but years of shrinking seasonal workers that fell off to a trickle as well.
The knock on effect is massive. The seasonal workers supported a large permanent workforce - and more importantly tax revenues in the county are collapsing.
But the really important thing to understand is that once the industry is gone, it's gone for a long time. The other markets competing with the US are already expanding their industries to fill the void. Once those trees are planted, they produce fruit for several decades to come.
From a layman perspective, American fruit growers refused to change with the times. How long are they still trying to make the “Red Delicious” apple work? Another ex-major packer I know of made the peach fruit cups, which people have been catching on are just filled with corn syrup. But these have been long term purchasing trends, yet the growers seemed blindsided by the packers ceasing operations.
There has been massive innovation and development in apples in the past 20 years. Every apple farm with a clue is growing trees for the past decade that look nothing like the trees of old. They’re growing varieties that didn’t exist 20 years ago. If you’re still seeing Red Delicious anywhere, it’s on the buyers at your local markets that missed the boat.
I mean it also takes a long to build an orchard and get the apples to fruit. So older orchards are happily still producing old varietals instead of ripping and replacing the trees. Not everything old must be replaced with new - so wasteful.
I planted an apple tree in my yard 20 years go, just for fun. Last year, it finally decided to push out more than a few apples. This year, it put out so many the branches have bent nearly to the ground.
Idiot consumers forcing us to take forever for market innovations to come to market is not even close to new, and the consumers 100% deserve the blame, contempt, and policies designed to frustrate them.
I have to deal with this crap right now in the world of laundry and adjacent world of cleaning. We've had new Enzymes finally hitting the market en-mass for the first time in decades (DNAse/Lipase) which when combined in full spectrum with all other known enzymes leads to truly superior cleaning results. Literally no one has any excuse anymore for smelly clothes as a result of these innovations, and it's probably going to take another 5 years minimum for anyone outside of the nerds on r/laundry and other enthusiast communities to take advantage of these new innovations. For now, the so called "gold standard" Tide laundry detergent people are buying is straight up incomplete and could be tomorrow reformulated with both enzymes to radically improve its performance and isn't for... reasons???
Where else have we straight up regressed on technology? Vacuum cleaners were better in the 1980s when a higher percentage of America used central vacuums, an objectively superior technology. Guns were often made to higher metallurgical standards, CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s.
"Worse is better", literally, and all because of idiot consumers voting wrong with their wallet. They deserve contempt.
Oh, and Americans refusing to embrace bidet toilet seats, or air purification (both important circa covid, fecal plums and poor indoor air quality were a significant infection vector!)
The enzyme stuff is funny to me. DNAse, no purpose there. Why not RNAse too? People can't articulate why they even want a DNA degrading enzyme. Lipase to degrade lipids seems good, but then again, that is already the function of soap.
I knew a number of people whose home had central vacs but funny enough, none of them worked anymore. It was a sort of "what's that weird plug thing" conversation that lead to that somewhat underwhelming finding. I get the sense it is one of those things where if you want it fixed, you'd have to call a technician who will probably give you a quote you don't want to hear. Then you just forget about ever getting it fixed.
I don't know that central vacs were the height of vac technology, but I cannot understand how weak cordless/battery vacuums have such marketshare compared to a vacuum unit that gets 110/240v of power direct from the wall.
i don't think one necessarily needs the best of the best... probably cheap is enough for a bunch of people
i'll start by having my OLED smartphone dying after many years and the one i got used LCD. much worse and it felt like plastic. colors, brightness, even if my screen now refreshes twice as fast as the previous - fast forward 2 years i don't think i ever thought about the difference, nor saw it after 1 or 2 weeks with my phone
totally valid critique on durable products and better substances for cleaning although
> CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s
Except that they're absolutely huge and heavy for any halfway decent screen size and resolution. If I were to replace my two 24-inch screens with CRTs, I'd need a second desk for them alone.
A lot depends on what clothes you're washing. Modern enzymes are most useful with modern synthetic material blends, especially underwear. If you've ever had that type of thing stay stinky after washing, that's what's missing.
If you're wearing mostly cotton, normal detergent is largely fine unless it's heavily soiled/stained.
Ok so I have a soy sauce, or so I think it is, stain that I can't remove on a shirt. Is it still possible to clean it? Nothing I've tried seems to get rid of it.
Blood stains are easy. Wash cold, and they come right out.
I can’t remember the last time I had curry stains on anything, and I lived in central India for a year. I just used the typical local detergent and did my own laundry. Always cold though, well as cold as it would ever get - 80F was typical.
My wife and I used to drive around aimlessly when I was in grad school and she was just starting her career as a doctor. We found that it was a good way to relax, and we sometimes discovered fun local gems when we did this.
One weekend we stumbled on a local apple orchard doing a cider making demonstration. We were the only people there so the orchardist (he called himself a “pomoculturist”) personally showed us around, picking an occasional apple, telling us about it, and then encouraging us to take a bite.
At one point he picked a deeply dark purple, almost black, apple and handed it to me. “Black Oxford” The flavor was intense: acidic, sweet, floral. Then another, dark red and fragrant. “Winesap” Then “Belle de Boskoop”. And on and on.
None of these apples are sold commercially except at small scale directly from orchards. The flavors, appearances, and aromas of apples is truly astonishing. So I think that’s why Red Delicious gets all the hate. The world of apples is amazing and huge.
I prefer to see Red Delicious as yet another miracle of apple genetics, just one that I don’t personally care for. But if you have the opportunity to visit an heirloom orchard, please do.
For me, it was a life-changing event: I now have a small heirloom orchard of my own.
It's mealy, bitter, and has a thick unpleasant skin. Many articles call it "the worst apple in the world." Decades of engineering it for transportability at the cost of taste and edibility are to blame.
But the U.S. has created new, much better apples, like Cosmic Crisp (2020)
I've read that Honeycrisp is difficult to grow, that's probably why.
Cosmic Crisp is much easier to grow, at least in the climate it was developed for/in. Those 2 varieties are somewhat similar, although I find Honeycrisp a bit more subtle in flavor and enjoyable, while Cosmic Crisp has just a strong sweet/tart flavor.
My understanding is that demand killed the Honeycrisp. When it first came out, it was very delicate and could only be grown in certain places. But it was a perfect apple- crisp and sweet and bursting with flavor. So everyone who tasted one loved it and wanted more.
And so the food scientists went to work, and figured out how to cross-breed in the ability to grow in a wider variety of places. And adding in the capability to grow in large numbers like the Red Delicious turned the Honeycrisp into an apple that tasted more like the Red Delicious.
The US is really amazingly good at growing food, but it is because the physical reality- not just transportation but growing conditions- trumps taste in the main.
My advice, as someone who grew up regularly apple-picking, for going local is to prefer the types that are local versus the names that you recognize from the supermarket. Unless you are in exactly the right area (upper Midwest), you will be much better off with the best apples for your region then with a locally grown Honeycrisp.
In upstate New York, I would recommend Autumn Crisp, Blondee, Macoun and Shizuka. I haven't picked apples in Virginia in about a decade, so I'm probably out of date on the right types to get there, but I remember loving Stayman apples.
I've enjoyed listening to dozens of talks by Alan Watts, who is a pretty chill guy until he comes across the subject of red delicious apples. Never heard him curse about any other subject.
The Red Delicious has been optimized for the growers, packers, and grocery stores, and not the consumer. The priorities are thick skin so they can be roughly handled, and bright red because they believed that's what would make people purchase them. "Cosmic Crisp" is their answer to the Honeycrisp, by trying to tweak the Red Delicious instead of abandoning it. I see it as the equivalent of "a faster horse" dilemma.
It's mealy, tastes pasty and bland with no flavor. Honeycrisp so much better tasting and texture! Red delicious were bred to have a dark red outside and look like a classic "apple" while sacrificing the apple flavor inside.
No idea if this is still true of what is currently sold under the name. All apple verities are clones so the they should be (mostly) the same but the verity is old enough to not have anyone protecting the name.
Red Delicious is not a pure clone of the original. Random genetic mutations have happens over the years and those were cloned. Normal breeding has more genetic variation but clones get some
I am somehow in the "I like Red Delicious" camp. Perhaps because I was used to Kashmiri apples, that apparently share the cultivar roots of red delicious. Never liked the more acidic varieties. Actually like the "mealy" texture - (it feels grainy to me)
In my family they’ve always been known as “those apples that look pretty on the shelf at the supermarket but taste like cardboard and aren’t even good for cooking”. We’ll all opt for just about any other cultivar if given the choice.
Nobody in any major apple growing region (Washington) is growing Red Delicious as their main apple variety for consumers, not even close. They're all growing various club apples (e.g. Envy, Cosmic Crisp), and there's massive competition to be the next honeycrisp (btw, honeycrisp quality is seasonal due to packaging, out of season they're significantly worse because they've been in storage for a long time, Apples are harvested only once a year)
Oh, I read this as "disease killed the fruit=>the packing companies went bankrupt=>the farmers stopped growing=>no one needed a seasonal workforce=>all of the people who served the seasonal workforce lost their jobs."
The thing about the "wages are low because of immigrants" is that it neglects that all of those immigrants are consumers just as much as they producers. They need food, medical care, places to relax, places to live, and so these immigrants employ plenty of native born people, people who would not have jobs if those immigrants weren't there consuming. Even if you could get higher wages to draw other native born people in from another part of the country, then you are just stealing the people and all of this sort of consumption from another part of your same country.
Not all farm workers are immigrants, legal or otherwise. There are many temporary, seasonal workers that make poverty wages, but it's more than they would make in Mexico or wherever else. The farms provide basic necessities and pay the workers as little as possible.
Technically yes, but it still isn't a quick fix. Seasonal and temporary workers still need other seasonal work or jobs that let them leave for seasonal work and need the capital investment to be able to travel for work and live at different farms. A single seasonal job paying good won't by itself get someone to invest into van-life, its maybe 2 months out of 12 and not entirely predictable work/profit just from yield variability. And most modern jobs don't let someone leave for weeks at a time to work elsewhere, atleast not any that are near the price range of basic physical labor.
You also lose a significant amount of productivity from first-timers in any process, and other full-time jobs taking away your expe
Higher wages means higher prices. At a certain point your price is uncompetitive with imports. You can use tariffs to protect a local product against an imported one, but that would require a competent leader who doesn't get emotional and declare a war (bomb-based or trade-based) when his feelings are hurt
Was one of them Del Monte? They made a bad bet about consumption patterns from COVID persisting, but canned fruit demand didn't stay high, if I understand correctly.
I was told if we kill people in the streets and create concentration camps to put everyone suspected of being an immigrant in (even if they have legal papers, bc hey those can be fake who knows when your Prez thinks voting is fake) and send every immigrant back then Americans would be wealthy and prosperous and you're saying that's not the case in a country that's had extremely low unemployment for almost 15 straight years (excepting COVID)?
Grand-post doesn't specify what kind of fruit the region their parents live in specializes in, and plenty of fruit grows on trees (citrus, stone fruit and apples leap immediately to mind).
And I know that some Washington apple packing and Florida citrus packing companies have declared bankruptcy in the past year, so those would be my guesses.
While technically incorrect, tree is informally used to describe grape vines in some regions. Similar to “tomato plants” which is a more common example.
I just got back from Italy where I bought several cases and large formats of wine that, even after shipping, cost less than the non-plutocratic greats from California. Wildly, I got charged zero duties. Not even MVN. (I suspect it’s because I’m in a red state.)
Given how much of American farming went hard MAGA, it’s really difficult to feel compassionate for their struggles. Maybe after bankruptcy the new owners will be better.
Let's just say it as it is... Wine is 'supposedly' an acquired taste but for most, it tastes bitter and not enjoyable for the cost. Tastes shift and luxury items from yesteryear no longer makes a strong statement about affluence to this generation.
I don't think you'll have several thousand years of people enjoying wine and then suddenly one generation decides that "wait this doesn't even taste good?".
I really like wine, and a $8.50 bottle of good quality French bubbles isn't a luxury good or a status symbol it's just life.
But it's definitely acquired - and the fewer that acquire that taste, the less you'll sell. And people I guess often establish that taste in the 20-30 year age, and if people go out less and drink less, perhaps they'll not grow up to be wine-drinking 50 year olds?
I think it just depends on what you like. I am not a big fan or most red wines (though some are good) and they give me headaches, but many chilled white wines I can drink like water.
Acrid is probably the word they were looking for. Wine isn't sour.
It could be that my affinity for port & madeira biases me, but the wine-haters I know have all expressed a strong dislike of what they described as its "acidity".
I believe they mean having alternative choices in what one can legally consume to get high/drunk/etc. Anecdotally I know a few folks who went from illegal pot in high school to wine as adults because it is more socially acceptable, then back to pot when legal.
I don't know any pot smoker who ever gave a flying crap if it was legal. Let's not whitewash the past. It became legal for a reason.
If you feel this way about pot, have you not also considered that similar already occurred with alcohol roughly a century ago (in the USA)? Why do you think cops avoid overpolicing bars when they'd be entirely in their right to do so?
Personal use of drugs is the clearest example in all of criminal justice where people of all beliefs have to admit there really is a much bigger and widespread mental health problem at the root of it. This is very very far from a new topic. There's nothing special about pot.
> I don't know any pot smoker who ever gave a flying crap if it was legal.
I know plenty.
Generally they fit the pattern of being familiar with it from exposure a few times as teenagers or such and liked it, but it wasn't a big enough deal for them to want to find and maintain a relationship with a drug dealer, concerns that if they pulled it out at a party it might lead to consequences within their social or professional circle, etc.
I don’t know what GP is smoking. Most people do not maintain a relationship with a drug dealer. Legal access available from a convenient store front unlocks plenty of users who did not want the legal risk or hassle.
The biggest case you can follow is Canada. Even wine-drinking elderly sometimes switch to cannabis, due to lessened hangovers. Also, removing the friction is a huge boost to basically any industry.
Edibles/beverages are widely available now. Previously you'd have to purchase flower on the black market then use your home kitchen (which could be shared with your parents) to decarb and infuse it.
Sorry, but what way do you think I feel about pot? I was just providing anecdotal examples to explain the reasoning of why pot being legal could have an impact on demand for wine. It’s just a demand curve relationship, not my personal opinions on the legality of pot.
For the pot smokers who care about legality, it does matter for folks who have to take drug tests for their jobs. Several of my good friends stopped using it when that was a concern.
I happily smoke pot while illegal if it happens to be around and someone else provided it and I don't have to drive that day or do anything the next day. I chipped in or did favors not to be a mooch but never bought it directly myself, nor posessed any. None in my car, my house etc.
So that means very infrequently. Depends how many and what kinds of parties I found myself at that year.
I totally like it, will not hesitate if conditions are right, and the only reason I stayed away not doing any more than that was it wasn't worth the risk.
Even today I don't risk it because sometimes I drive across many state lines and I don't want to worry about keeping track of where I might possibly get in trouble if I piss off a cop at a traffic stop, which I am likely to do.
I don't think it's so crazy that there are pot smokers that can take it or leave it. Merely, you would probably never have realized I was a pot smoker, because I don't talk about it all the time for no reason, or even think about it. We'd have to be not merely aquaintances, but we'd have to sometime be at the same party at the same time with the other conditions met. You can't count these people that you have no way to know to count.
There absolutely is a contingent of "wine mom" types who used to enjoy a glass of wine in the evenings but have transitioned to gummies or other edibles before bed.
I know several people who started drinking less and used pot more back when they were able to get their medical marijuana card. Now that it's legal here, I expect more people have done the same.
Not everyone is a hardcore binge drinker or an all-day-every-day pothead. There are lots of occasional-to-moderate users of both, and legalization of weed has increased availability for the casual user. There are many casual users nowadays who have never interacted with the illegal side of things, and never had a relationship with a dealer.
Weed is not a direct replacement for alcohol, but it can be a preferred alternative sometimes, for some people, and legalization has made that more attractive.
That's a pretty big claim. Alcohol's harm to major organs like the liver is pretty well known. What kind of harm does THC/CBD cause when consumed orally?
Alcohol poisoning is a thing. I have yet to hear of a case of canabanoid poisoning. Canabanoids also don't lower your inhibition, which is why DUIs went down in states that legalized. The difference in risk could not be more stark.
Countries other than the US have, for reasons that you may choose to find mysterious, imposed tariffs on products exported from the US.
Tariffs raise the consumer-visible price of those goods. This then, due to demand elasticity, causes consumers in those non-US countries to buy fewer of those products.
Some impact may be badwill as well but quite a bit is first-order impact of second-order tariffs.
In 2024 (pre-trade-war), the US exported $168M of wine to the EU and $460M to Canada. Any recovery in wine exports to the EU won’t make up for Canadian boycotts.
Numbers for importing California wines went from $540 million, to $40 million in 3, 5 years. For one province alone. And this wasn't a federal decision, this was people telling their provincial government to do it. And they listened.
Question: what is the ratio of US wine imported into the EU vs US wine imported into Canada, by dollar value?
Question: what is the percentage increase in tariff amounts on wine between the pre- and post-USMCA state of play between the US and Canada?
Sometimes seeing why something has happened requires considering wider context, which is why it's usually good for a nation to ensure primary education includes solid economics, history, media literacy, etc curricula.
I'll give my own personal reasons, our interest rates were going down.. Trump decides to start a trade war, then the central banks get a bit worried, then Trump decides to go to war with Iran.. now the central banks are increasing interest rates, as the future is uncertain.
His whole rhetoric is America should make more stuff right... Well, we can certainly stop buying that stuff since the choices he's made have hurt us. I'd prefer to buy closer to home thanks.
I am from a 4th generation wine growing family from Germany, and we have the exact same issues here. There is a global oversupply of grapes and wines. A lot of people in my region are struggling, my family included. Some experienced growers estimate 5-10 years until it becomes better for growers.
The trade wars, which some commenters suggested as a reason, are adding not as much to it as you might assume. I personally thing that it is more of a generational shift of habits.
I've heard a lot of stuff like people don't WANT to drink anymore but I wonder if it's not so much people's perception of drinking changed as opposed to people are in social settings where drinking occurs less. Alcohol is an addictive substance and best way to get someone hooked is small, frequent events where drinks are consumed. Over time they consume more and more and seek out more places to drink (and socialize) as the hook sets in. Peer pressure also plays a big role here too.
Wondering with remote work, remote school, etc post covid if we are just seeing less hooks set and less peer pressure.
Because of years of trade war, American wine industry is taking a beating around the world and a lot of Australia, NZ, and South Africa is picking up that slack. Even niche producers like Chinese and Japanese wine industry are very quickly maturing into real home-grown industries. The biggest market for California has always been Asia, and it's been near impossible to stumble into Opus One the way you used to be able to in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, etc.
Old world has always been able to be flexible, eating these kinds of punches by pivoting into NA or brandy during gluts, and demand has less fluctuations. This contraction, like a lot of everything else happening in the US, maybe was already coming because of some trends overlapping, but policy threw gasoline onto a combustible and fragile situation.
Ok, so does this mean prices in the US will go down? I keep seeing stuff about countries shifting away from US goods but prices seem to continue to rise.
>Ok, so does this mean prices in the US will go down? I keep seeing stuff about countries shifting away from US goods but prices seem to continue to rise.
The actual answer is yes, at least when it comes to wine (although I will note that the trade war stuff is only part of the picture--it has certainly hurt a number of wineries that previously relied on exports, but the wine industry is experiencing a much broader downturn than just this).
Not all wine, of course, but some wine is indeed seeing prices drop. There have been some great deals to be had in the past few years in certain corners, both big and small. Costco has had increasingly good deals on wine lately and other large retailers are having more and more as well.
There's a lot of price stickiness with wine, with wineries not wanting to lower sticker prices (since price is closely tied to branding and market positioning), so there's also been this fascinating trend of wine increasingly being bulked out to online retailers that operate on a rotating flash sale model (companies like Last Bottle or Wine Access), or to third parties who relabel it and sell it under an NDA on the original brand. These segments of the market are only going to continue to grow in the coming years as the glut of wine continues.
Prices and costs generally increase as the quantity sold decreases.
If they're buying fewer bottles for example, bottles will cost them more per bottle.
And if they're "losing money on international sales", often times they'll try to recoup that elsewhere. Like jacking up their own prices in justification.
There was a time not too long ago that Napa wineries still had free tastings and cheap bottles. As demand went up, so did prices. As demand goes down prices also go up? This seems disconnected from the supply/demand curves we learned about in econ 101.
Econ 101 usually teaches a simplified model... Still my lower divs covered the relationships between scaling supply and costs. It really just depends on the market, sometimes you are amortizing a high capital cost over each unit sold, while other times you are paying high input costs that are directly related to your scale. Scarcity/abundance of inputs is another major factor.
Higher demand incentivizes more production, increasing supply which drives prices down. Demand increases only drive up prices if supply is constrained.
Very likely wine demand was not going up, and price increases were instead due to increasing costs and inflation.
Wine has the advantage that it keeps really well, and in some cases improves (becomes more valuable with age.)
So when demand softens it may be advantageous to hold back the excess rather than lower prices. Yes, there are cash flow issues when this approach gets out of hand, but financial interests can cover a lot of that as well.
Eh, not really true for the cheap end of the market. A lot of wine sold in supermarkets, for example, is meant to be consumed a couple of years after bottling, tops. And storage can be a significant problem.
Reportedly, last year ~10% of California vineyards were uprooted, some grapes like Pinot Noir production is down 30%. Growers are going to keep trimming until they get back into the black, or prices fall down far enough for consumers to come back, whichever happens first. And it's not going to be just CA, it will be NY, TX, WA, OR wineries too, all areas that had big capex expansion over the past 10 years.
You can see it happening in real-time, right this moment. Go to your local Costco wine section, look for the clearance markdowns where the price ends in $0.97. That means it's marked for clearance and won't be coming back, and there's some screaming deals right now.
Companies will try to make up lost sales by serving American "whales", especially in a luxury good like wine. I would expect prices to rise here in the short term and then the market will decide whether that means those of us outside the 1% stretch our budgets to keep buying or turn to the cheaper options.
Kind of like the Super Bowl and other major sporting events. Normies can make that their "major trip" for the year but mostly they want to sell their multi-thousand dollar tickets to folks who will be at the next big thing the following month.
Wine grapes aren’t good for eating. People buy big, sweet grapes with thin skins and no seeds … which is virtually the opposite of what grapes grown for winemaking are.
dessert and wine sorts are different. Also, people eat much less grapes than they drink, though some could be turned into raisins, but it is again not that much.
My pet theory is that the vast majority of people have dopamine tickling devices that they carry around in their pockets, so alcohol use is subconsciously understood as _an addition to_ the negative behavior most people are already engaging in daily. And, in addition to that, scrolling keeps you occupied when you might otherwise be bored enough to crack open a cold one.
Possibly to do with research showing that no amount of alcohol is healthy/beneficial and even small quantities are bad. I think overall this is a good thing for society: its one of the leading causes of death and destruction backed by a powerful Government lobby.
The only reason alcohol is still legal is the long societal history and how ingrained it has been into most cultures for such a long time.
If we "discovered" alcohol today and didn't have it before it would certainly be illegal, or at the very least doing anything drunk would be way more severe of a punishment.
There are much safer and less dangerous vices available nowadays, but the liquor industry doesn't want to let go.
Very interesting how different the experiences can be from one continent to another. But then again, who cares for American wine (certainly not the Euros).
Coming from Europe I'm used to see that every vineyard makes their own wine. Seeing grapes become such a commodified thing is a bit weird, I must say. Buyers of these will probably by definition make blended wines, which are not really held in high regards. People who drink wine are usually quite demanding about their drink.
So yeah, I'm surprised the farmers just let go of their produce instead of making a wine themself, if they think the vintage is so great.
It is true tho that regular wine has been in decline; nobody (aka the younger folks) wants that Monsanto-flavored and sulfured wine anymore, so natural wine has been a big craze and also more funky flavours are swiftly taking ground. Sure, the quantities are different, for many reasons - having less money in the pocket being one of them.
> But then again, who cares for American wine (certainly not the Euros).
Which is of course its own interesting thing given that almost every European vineyards is grafted from American vines following the wine blight. Like the number of vineyards in Europe that aren't grafted from American vines can be counted on one hand.
This is not particularly relevant to the wine. The rootstock may be from American vines, but the vines grafted on (and thus the grapes) are still European varieties.
This organism is practically hacking the plant in a multiphase process. It is interesting how selection forces are working at every stage, hardening the hack.
> Coming from Europe I'm used to see that every vineyard makes their own wine.
This isn’t strictly true. Europe has négociants, who buy grapes from smaller growers to make wine from (to be fair, often alongside their own vineyard holdings).
> But then again, who cares for American wine (certainly not the Euros).
Huge fan of Old World wine here. With that said, the Americans are producing remarkable wines these days. For my palate, I enjoy Sonoma and Willamette Valley. Even tasted blind, top critics have preferred California to France — look up the Judgment of Paris!
> Buyers of these will probably by definition make blended wines, which are not really held in high regards. People who drink wine are usually quite demanding about their drink.
The highest regarded wines are blended. Bordeaux wine makers that have large estates may only use their harvests (still blending varietals from year to year), but many Burgundy wine makers will buy harvests from different parcels and blend. There are exceptions but that is not the norm.
That is true, the French (as opposed e.g. the Germans, they blend different varieties much less) in particular do this, and they do it well. So yes, strictly speaking these are blended wines as well. But seldomly any wine maker in France would buy them; it all comes from their own parcels, and these blends are well established flavor profiles. They know their own grapes and what they can do with it.
If you do really high volumes you buy, sure. But again, it's of no surprise if these manufacturers experience a decline of demand.
Actually that is one of the big criticisms of French wine, blends are regulated by the AOC system where as California is more free to experiment. but any gross generalization of American wine is probably wrong. Plenty of wineries blend, plenty don't. Doesn't take much looking to find wineries that make wine from only grapes they grow...
Having grown up in California, we thought the same for European wines. Why bother when they are no better than the local swill. Though I'm not sure how true your conjecture is as my family was in Amsterdam a few years ago and eating at a fancy french restaurant got talking to the sommelier and mentioned we now lived in Oregon which turned in to a conversation about Pinot Noirs of the Willamette valley. He knew all about them...
But more to the point, all the top french Champagne producers have large holdings and production in and around Napa. They probably care...
US news outlets are often blocked where I live too, but not this one. Here's what the articles says:
There are a variety of forces driving the decline in wine sales. Baby boomers are aging out of the market while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns. Wine faces competition from craft beer, liquor and canned cocktails as well as cannabis.
“The kids just aren’t drinking as much,” Berryhill said. “And it’s not just wine, it’s whiskey and beer and everything. And then you’ve also got the competition with all the seltzers.”
Tariffs have reduced exports, particularly to Canada, which was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.
Cannabis use is the reason. Daily cannabis use has surpassed daily alcohol use in the US. Add on that it's generally perceived as not as bad for you. Finally the population brought up drinking is dying off.
The mention of generations not drinking just seems like the standard nonsense you see on stuff like this where businesses want any excuse but the price of the end product.
A lot of places in the world are going through huge increases in cost of living, their choice of alcohol is going to be a cheaper buzz as a result, not expensive ‘prestige’ alcohols
They’re separate things though. While there might be a decline generally in alcohol consumption, that doesn’t mean it’s specifically why they can’t sell the wine. Of the reduced amount of alcohol being sold, the % going to wine will be even smaller because it is more expensive
My pet explanation is the transition to a knowledge-based economy. You might be ok laying bricks or pulling levers while nursing a slight hangover, but you can't stare into a screen or keep hold of a complex coding flow.
Maybe the AI revolution will "help" in that area too...
To be fair, American wine, probably undeservedly, doesn’t seem to have much appeal in Europe. There’s still a strong perception that wine should be either French or Italian, and anything else tends to be (again undeservedly) frowned upon.
I've always been around American wines and I can assure you it's fairly well-deserved. The quality in (even "high-end") American wine just simply is not there. The same can be said for their whiskey.
I'd characterize it differently - america makes lots of medicore wine and whiskey, but it also makes some fantastic wine and whiskey - my problem has always been that the good stuff in the US is stupidly overpriced why pay 2x-3x+ for an american bottle of wine when you can have one of similar quality for a fraction of the price from south africa, spain, france, germany etc.
For the most part it's not "bad", there's even some pretty good options, but nothing I'd describe as "premium". Americans have this strange affinity for additives, and it's not hard to tell in the final product.
I was at an engagement party of some in-laws over the weekend: people getting married in their mid-twenties. The alcohol selection was mimosas (low gravity champagne mixed with juice) as well as Coors Light, which few people drank. Nothing at 5% or greater and no red wine. The younger people were there and gone in about an hour. So what little was served wasn't anything that people could get a buzz from while many of the middle aged adults have started to abstain.
Late 30s. Used to drink a fair amount of wine/beer. I Drink a lot less now.
- Getting older, it affects me for longer. I don’t want to write off feeling tip top the next day. Too high a price to pay.
- I try and train (exercise) hard most days - I can’t train anywhere near as well after alcohol.
- Kids - when you’re trying to fit work, hobbies, training, learning / self development and kids / family in, there’s not much room for slack. (Which could be considered a bad situation in itself…)
Has just become not worth it regularly. Fortnightly binges work better!
Opposite for me. Late 30s but I drink more or the same.
But I don't drink my go-to Zinfandel anymore as it has a big ass flag printed on the box. It's embarrassing feeling the cashier's judgemental gaze. They know I'm a drunk of course but I don't want them thinking I support the US
Tell the wine makers to stop putting that flag on there and maybe exports may pick up again
America’s obsession with their flag is now seen as nationalism on the outside. I always ask to imagine Germans putting their massive flag absolutely everywhere possible and how would that make everyone else feel.
Yep fully appreciate that , being slightly glib- it’s probably a fraction of what it would have been spread out though, and probably feels like more of a binge due to infrequency / age than it actually is!
Napa used to be covered in peach orchards until it became clear that grapes were much more profitable. The trees were cleared to make way for vineyards.
The next profitable use of land will show itself soon enough.
You. Yes you, alcohol-consuming Californian. Go buy some grapes whilst they're cheap and make some wine.
I barely drink these days, but wine production is great fun and pretty damn easy. I've done it a couple of times, it was super rewarding.
It's much more straightforward than most booze (e.g., beer). You just need clean gear and mashed up grapes, and some sulphites on hand if things get a bit wonky. There's very little else to it.
I think anyone who drinks should make wine once in their life.
As a homebrewer, this is a comment I was expecting to see. Barley prices skyrocketed in 2021 due to increased demand (COVID) and geopolitical turmoil (One major European barley producers happened to invade another). These increased prices along with the quality jump in American beers (and becoming a father) reduced my interest in brewing, but it's still a hobby I revere.
Grape sales to hobbyists won't save the industry, but it could diversify the market slightly. Home winemaking is obviously less efficient than manufacturing, but when the supply must be liquidated that becomes a feature instead of a bug.
There are taste difference, brand prestige and story differences, and scarcity. The most extreme examples of this would be in burgundy where laws from a few hundred years ago ranked the value of very small and fractured plots of land and it’s been memed into the best wine in the world so you have the prestige of this ancient law, the scarcity of these small plots built in, and a region that is good but not my favorite selling the most expensive wine in the world.
Things are certainly changing. My son lives in a flat of 5 male University engineering students in the UK. None of them drink much alcohol at all. They don't even drink tea or coffee. Very different from when I was at University in the 80s.
When I was in my early 20s, I had a “moment of lucidity” where I, while drunk, looked around at all my other drunk friends and couldn’t help but think: this is a huge waste of time, and I’m going to feel awful tomorrow. A few weeks later, I stopped drinking entirely.
Some of those friends disappeared almost immediately. The only thing we really had in common, after all, was drinking together. But what was most notable was that, within a few short years, the vast majority of that group of friends was stone-cold sober.
I’m now in my mid-to-late 30s, and I don’t have a single friend who drinks anymore. My wife and I never started drinking again, and we’ve even seen some of our older family members stop drinking too.
At least in my anecdotal experience and within my bubble, it’s becoming increasingly normalised to be sober. When I quit drinking, people questioned the decision, asked me if I had a problem, and were generally quite hostile the idea. When my sister-in-law quit drinking last year however, people celebrated the decision.
Times are certainly changing.
Sidenote: the amount of money I have saved by not drinking is astounding. I mostly funnel anything I don't spend into index funds and the returns have been staggering.
It's amazing to me how everyone is so sure of their pet theories. Young people are socializing less! It's GLP-1s! Pot is pushing out wine! Or is it craft beer! Or liquor! Or Covid made us all drink less!
How hard is it to say you just don't know? The reason we have researchers and sociologists examine this stuff is to look at actual data and come to a better conclusion than rando Internet person that pulled it out of their ass.
Looking at the current state of politics, it's basically impossible for most people. Even agnosticism is not that widespread, and that's a known position. It's not even that with most topics.
One weird thing when living in the US is how hard it is to find pure grape juice - it is usually not something sold in supermarkets like orange or apple juice is. In the remainder of the west world this is not the case and normally it replaces the role cranberry juice has in the US.
Where in the US do you live? I've lived in Florida and Chicago and every supermarket sells 100% grape juice. Costco too. Welch's and Kedem are the two big brands. There's also grape-flavored "100% juice" that's primarily apple and pear juice with grape flavoring, but the actual grape juice is on the shelf next to it.
I wonder if the industry can shift towards production foods. Grapes are high in sugar which has value to the food industry. We have a concord grapevine at my house that produces 10-15 gallons of fruit a year and we use the grapes to supplement other meals and create fruit roll up preserves.
I wonder if clickbait / online entertainment is replacing booze as the opiate of the masses? People have mentioned weed but I see few stoners and like 90% of people staring at screens.
This is being repeated over and over again on this page, but it's factually untrue… I've tasted dozens of kinds of wine grapes, and lots are tasty or at least as palatable as some of the blander table grapes – some are even widely recognized as such (muscat!). Also, even varieties that are not great for eating can often be used to produce some very nice juice – cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay are all used for high-end, monovarietal grape juices in France for instance.
"Eating" grapes are mostly not optimized for eating, they are optimized for shipping and lifetime at the supermarket. Wine grapes taste great, but don't travel well (and have bigger seeds, smaller fruit, etc.). American supermarkets sell mostly seedless grapes, which don't taste great, but are easy to eat and to give to kids.
I was thinking the same thing. Why not just sell the grapes straight to us grape loving people? They do have a short shelf life though, and as a lover of concord grapes I do go bananas during concord grape season but I really can only eat so many before they start to spoil and I do eat large amounts of them. The concord grape dealers know me and flag me down to give me deals.
Not sure how the extra supply for grapes affect retail prices of grapes for regular consumption. But at Costco in Southern CA, the price of grapes have been fairly stable (~$5.99 - $7.99) over the last year or a little more.
California’s wine grapes (vitis vinifera) aren’t suitable for eating. Some varieties (vitis labrusca) can be used for table grapes or wine grapes, but those aren’t really grown in California.
Everyone says this, but here's a sample of size 1: some years ago I was at a Sonoma winery during harvest season, reached my hand through a fence, grabbed a bunch of grapes and ate them. They were delicious.
The issues are they likely have seeds, might not travel or store as well, and are smaller than consumers are used to. There's also already a supply of table grapes you'd be competing with. To your experience, if they're ripe, they'll taste sweet and grapey. They're not that different.
They taste so different than the grapes in the grocery store they might as well be a different fruit entirely imo. So much better. Sweeter. Berry or stone fruit like. Almost floral. The vintners are seriously holding out on us. Yes there are seeds, but that is the price you pay for the finest grape you will ever feast upon. You go back to a store bought "red seedless" it taste like a sad old cantaloupe in comparison.
I mean that's the case with basically every fruit. The modern variants are larger, shelf-able for longer, while the older ones are smaller, but taste way better.
Are there industry forecasts that predicted (or didn’t) this? I wonder how volatile the market is, and how much risk the growers thought they were taking.
is it possible to pivot? maybe make grape juice or associated products like jam/jelly etc, or go a bit further on the alcohol side and either make vinegar or maybe even ethanol (is ethanol fuel blending still a thing in the US?)
I noticed Trader Joes was selling champagne grapes the other day. Things must be really, exceptionally grim. France has been stockpiling wine in state owned warehouses (to keep it off the market) and paying farmers to tear up their vineyards.
The trend is said to be declining wine- and alcohol consumption in general. But tariffs and US-Canada relations are also mentioned.
For my part, I loved a few Californian wines, but ever since Trump threatened to invade my country, I haven't bought a single bottle, and I never will.
I think that mirrors others here, those bottles seem to be going out of rotation entirely - and we generally mark whether a product comes from inside the EU now.
Which, curiously, started when relations went sour.
Article fails to note that the 2010s saw abnormally high per capita wine consumption, and even after the 20% decline in the 2020s to date, per capita consumption is still more than 50% above historical baseline. This isn't the death of a once stable industry, this is a predictable bursting of an obvious bubble.
There is no reason to drink. It’s literally poison. And I feel in recent decades people have become more obsessed with chasing fitness and health that abstaining from alcohol is very chic.
Using it as a “social lubricant” is a lame excuse, it makes you an imposter giving a false representation of your true personality that people would actually interact with day to day. When the tide goes out, we’ll see who was swimming naked.
The US is the #4 wine producing nation in the world, with over 80% of American wine being produced in California, so yes, Californian wine is very much a thing.
If you sell the land the rip up the vines, you've destroyed the winegrowing capacity.
That's fine if you believe this is a long-term trend and creative destruction needs to replace it with something. Maybe it will even be more economically productive than a strip mall or a subdivision. (Maybe...)
That's less fine if you think this is due to temporary fluctuations in demands, such as say decreased demand of american goods due to either economic status or perception of american goods in global markets. That framing is one where some stupid national-level moves may have destroyed or consolidated american economic might. And whether consolidation is the same thing as destruction, it at least decreases competition and increases mediocrity, which reading between the lines on your tone is something I suspect you in theory might support.
The decrease in consumption predates the current trade issues. Peak domestic wine consumption was in 2021 and has been falling rapidly ever since. There hasn't been a decrease in demand of this magnitude or duration since the 80s. Despite several years of declining consumption, per capita consumption remains over 50 percent above historical baseline. Combined with demographic changes that will decrease avid wine consumers as a fraction of the population, it's quite clear that the 2010s bubble was the short term abnormality.
About time really, living in the Western Cape in South Africa (similar climate to California) and its mind blowing how much of the best most productive land is used for wine production. With some of the highest fetal alcohol rates in the world, cheapest alcohol and most dangerous roads due to drink driving it's time we take a hard look at whether it is worth it as a society. Farm workers in these areas can't afford nutritious food because the best land is used for producing wine for export mostly to benefit foreign land owners (here's looking at you Richard Branson, etc) instead of growing food...seems pretty crazy really.
South Africa is big, really big. That small sliver of land you see devoted to wine farming is not the reason they can't afford nutritious food. But it does provide those farm workers with a good income relative to other farm industries in South Africa (their wages and benefits tend to be better).
That said, American wine—and California wine in particular—has a bit of an IPA problem inasmuch as there is a lot of overpriced, overproduced swill being priced exceptionally high by international standards.
Not just American wine... wines from any region have always been more expensive in the US.
Quick poking around Google... Italy, France, and Germany all have mid-tier bottles of their own domestic wine for far less than we (in the US) get any wine, domestic or import.
I have, and their prices have gone up. Their reserve wines are $20 now. Still a good buy for bottles that are usually very drinkable. Bit similar wine in Italy would still be about half that price.
It is incredibly difficult to sustainably run a winery in California. The margins are often negative without operating at a large scale, which is part of why the industry has consolidated heavily over the past few decades.
Often times, wealthy people buy wineries as a hobby to dabble in, but end up selling and calling it a day before it drains their cash. If you want to buy wine for cheap that is made in California, buy mass-market wine.
Smaller brands are generally expensive because that price is necessary to sustain operations, but most of the time that fails, and the owners end up selling.
I get the swill at a discount :) "The best wine is the wine you like best." Best deal I recently got was a few hundred bottles for under $1k, <$5/bottle. Easier than the trek to a Trader Joe's or Costco, ymmv (and I don't feel bad throwing a bottle out if it isn't for me, versus a $100+ bottle).
You allowed to do that? You'd at least have to tip the box on its side if storing for a long time now?
I'm no sommelier but I hear the cork needs to stay wet or they'll spoil.
The bottles I've received are in large boxes that hold ~20 bottles each, delivered via Fedex. Each box goes in a spot on industrial shelving, and is cataloged into an inventory system when received.
Only one so far, I'm willing to take more but not a lot on offer. Maybe I'm talking to the wrong suppliers. There's a right price for everything, but I am looking for fire sale|"going out of business" prices. Replies with leads welcome!
I haven't noticed any retail wine prices stabilizing or decreasing, at least in the Bay Area. Napa wines are still exorbitantly priced, and imports are way the fuck more expensive due to tariffs.
On a pure price-performance basis it is difficult to justify buying US domestic wine over French imports. The quality of the latter is consistently higher at reasonable price points. California wines haven’t justified their price tag for a long time on average.
I collect burgundy .. mainly romanee conti .. and this article rings very true ..
i'm based in London .. and at places like Harrods / Hedonism Wines .. iv seen a bottle of romanee go from around £20k to £15k .. and sometimes £10 12k .. this year ..
At the same time cuban cigars ,, which are also something I collect/smoke .. seem to be going in completely the opposite direction and getting more expensive .. because of Venezuela/oil/embargoes .. so .. for once .. the wine market is giving me the better deal
I cut back drinking considerably because of how it affects my sleep. That, by itself, is the biggest thing for me. Even just one drink over a weekend lunch/brunch can disrupt my sleep later that night.
That said, when I look at the wider trend it seems obvious that "it's the economy, stupid" as are so many other wider trends. It's now commonplace in my city (one of the lowest CoL in the US) for a typical bar to charge $18-$22 for a cocktail and $9-$12 for a beer. Consider that the minimum wage here is still $7.25/hr and the average wage in the city is just $26.44/hr, and with the rise in cost of everything shrinking discretionary spending budgets, it's a big ask to expect someone to spend close to an hours labor for every single drink of an evening. There's obviously generational aspects as well, but how much of that is sociocultural vs economic? Gen Z is broke as a joke, they're not spending on booze when they can barely make rent and utilities.
I would expect Californian wine to be overpriced, as most things are there. That could also be a factor. If your local wine costs as much as a nice imported Spanish Rioja, why would anyone pick the local wine?
Unsurprising. As a US-based wine drinker, California wine feels overpriced and inferior to European imports. Add in Huberman convincing Gen Z that all alcohol is harmful, and the trend makes complete sense.
Over and over I'm seeing markets collapse for products that gradually got more expensive over decades and then folks on the sell side surprised when the market is gone rather than just capped at some price.
Commercial real estate is the same, it got so expensive with such a bad experience for people using it that folks discovered they don't need it.
You can't have a market for alcoholic beverages when the default cost is 2 or more hours of minimum wage work.
This is reminiscent of 90s Japan. Whisky consumption dropped during the economic hard times. Whisky manufacturers were forced to scale back production because of it. When demand came roaring back in the 2010s, they had no whisky to sell and a decade long runway to get production restarted. Whisky doesn't happen overnight. It's know as the Japanese Whisky Armageddon.
It's the cost, having a glass or bottle of wine before was just like buying some cheese to take to a party, now it's something you have to think about that, pair that with a potential hangover and people just decide not to bother.
While I enjoy a glass of wine every now and then, I'm not going to lament the decline of an industry producing alcoholic products; it's inarguably good that younger generations are drinking less. Sorry to the farmers, but profiting off of increasing public health risk maybe should be a precarious business. I'm not gonna get upset about tobacco farms shutting down or having to switch crops, and alcohol is just another addictive and harmful substance (I've known more people who died due to alcohol than any other substance, one in a drunk driving accident, one due to liver failure, two were alcoholics who died by suicide...can't be certain it was the alcohol, but addiction certainly didn't help their situation).
But, also, the income of younger generations has been crushed so much, the ones that do still drink can't afford expensive luxury booze. Decent wine is an expensive way to drink alcohol.
Most money gets spent in over-65 cohort in any case simply because they have the most of it, and they love wine. Just make less of more expensive ones.
People are increasingly broke and have less leisure time to spend it drinking. I stopped drinking during the pandemic and have had maybe one drink a year since. Once you stop, you really don't miss it.
Three issues, all compounding on each other, cause this. Poor foresight, overproduction, changes in youth drinking, and too much focus on small vintners.
There is a gut after production was ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone saw the trend line jump and assumed it wasn't a century-level event but a new trend that would last forever. Vines take a few years to start producing, if you swap or plant new acres you don't see the grapes for ~5 years. Which is now!
The US wine industry has tried for years to get younger drinkers. There is a strong relationship: the younger someone starts, the more time their palate has to develop, and the more likely they are to regularly buy more expensive wines.
The issue is they suck at it and regularly shoot themselves in the foot. I've seen party buses with kegs at tastings, which get people there but barely connect them to wine. Wineries are far, expensive (oh my god, tasting fees. They used to be excited you drove to them. They'd pour you anything. Now it's 2-3 bottles worth of $$ to walk in the door), and have special "rules" and social cues. The barrier to entry is high, and the old people who currently spend the money like it that way. So the audience is aging out.
There are 400-600 individual wineries in Sonoma and Napa. Each. Paso isn't far behind. It's just too many. How do you even choose the 2-6 you go to on a day trip to try them out? Let alone remember them in stores. There won't be consolidation like in other industries, because the brands of all the small fish are so diluted it's not worth acquiring.
There is a saying that "the best way to turn a large fortune into a small fortune is to buy a winery." And holy hell, did a ton of people do that. These small wineries don't make a profit, its a hobby for dozens to hundreds of people. They want the status, even if it costs them. So the market doesn't have clear signals for production and how to self-limit.
The fourth reason is that wineries don't grow grapes anymore. The industry is split into growers and vintners. Growers can take care of large agg with scale. Makers can choose à la carte what grapes they want that year. It's not a bad system and has enabled most of the smaller-scale wineries to launch without going totally bankrupt.
But now there are bag holders, and no one to buy their wares. If growers go out of business, there are no grapes to buy. Since Trump came in, they have already had issues getting labor. Costs have gone up, and no practical automation is available.
I believe there are separate issues with youth drinking, mostly around the risk involved in being inebriated and having a conversation or action come back to haunt you. Kids today live in a panopticon like my age never did. I can't say that I would be willing to open up the same way in today's environment.
What's happening is that consumers are paying more money for less value. So any business which produces real value is going to struggle to make a profit while fake businesses 'front companies' which produce nothing except lies are going to be making a lot of money. All the money is going to be captured by companies which control the customer relationship; I.e. media companies.
The global financial infrastructure is set up for this to happen.
It's like how they're trying to put protein in everything now. People are eating less meat and quality natural proteins and instead eating cheaper, low quality, synthesized proteins. Companies can slash production costs while branding it as 'healthy' and charge a premium... Let media brainwashing fill the gap and create the profit margin out of nothing. An extreme case I saw was cheese; the other day my wife bought some horrible cheese with '50% more protein' which tastes like plastic... Paid premium for it. I suspect the protein is from whey which is usually a waste byproduct from cheesemaking; they usually remove the stuff because it makes the cheese taste worse... But now they leave it in slap on a '50% more protein' and charge a premium for it. Then when you watch YouTube, you see all these food influencers using the word 'Protein' all the time when referring to beef or chicken... Brainwashing you into thinking that they are equivalent because they want to sell the cheap stuff to you through a different channel as a premium product!
As for synthetic proteins like beta-lactoglobulin which they feed animals to substitute whey powder (which they now simply leave in the cheese as discussed)... Guess what they use to produce these? Yeast + Sugar! Now you know why all the media has ganged up against sugar! Sugar is the new villain now because they don't want people eating it and drive up the price. They want sugar to be cheap so they can convert it to artificial proteins... Which can be sold directly at a premium.
Basically, the waste byproduct which used to go into animal feed is now fed to humans instead... And the animals we raise for meat now consume synthetic crap made from quality products that are being suppressed by the media.
And guess what; some of the new proteins and chemicals used to feed livestock are difficult and hazardous to produce and so the companies behind those have an oligopoly.
It's kind of insane how the entire economy turned into a pure manipulation play.
Anyway this is on a bit of a tangent from the topic of grapes and wine but the culprit is also media manipulation driven by the design of the financial and political system which produces and supports media monopolies.
Wine grapes are rather nice to eat (at least the ones I've tried), but they're typically smaller than American table grapes I've experienced, but hey, sell them as heirloom varieties at Portland farmers markets maybe?
It's gonna be quite a lot of additional surplus, and, they already do this. Surplus wine grapes get sold to concentrate makers, however, it pays less than it costs to grow them because concentrate is basically a commodity sweetener competing with sugar, corn syrup, and apple concentrate. Bottled grape juice is a small and shrinking market, and in that market, most people expect Concord flavour (these aren't that), plus a lot of bottled juice is reconstituted from that same commodity concentrate anyway.
Yes! I don't drink alcohol but have gone wine tasting with friends and one vineyard had grape juice from some of their grapes and it was interesting and yummy.
An interesting variety of grape juices would be very cool.
NA grape soda made from wine varietals is a niche product you can find in some wine producing regions here in the US and usually fairly expensive for a soda. All of the ones I've tried are pretty tasty, tough!
for consumption as raisins? I think raisins come from a particular variety - wine grapes aren't even that good to eat fresh, I would guess they wouldn't make good raisins either.
Please don't jeer like this on HN. Wine grape growers all over the world are experiencing similar declines in demand. The same thing is happening in Australia (I know people personally affected by it) and it has nothing to do with any flavor of political rule.
How is this jeering? I'm pointing out important facts about one of the subjects in the story that weren't included. I didn't celebrate or express my opinion. Should I have worded it in a different way?
It does suck for everyone else who didn't vote for this and I feel for them.
You didn’t point out “important facts”; you’ve raised vague associations and extrapolated them in a way that seems damning. There’s no evidence I can find that this man or his family members support this federal administration or its policies. Most of them haven’t been public representatives for over a decade. The last one left office in 2018. And all of that still has absolutely nothing to do with the macro forces affecting demand and prices for wine grapes throughout the world.
> Should I have worded it in a different way?
You shouldn’t have raised it at all. It’s a weak, tangential point, almost completely substance-free, and is in clear breach of the guidelines. HN is only a place where people want to participate because most people try to make solid points, and avoid posting junk like this.
Even if that slippery slope logic were true, the vast vast vast majority of farmers in the country are some flavor of conservative. It would be hard to ignore all of them and also care about our food supply.
I think OP was more pointing out a supreme irony with the farmer demographic. They rely heavily on seasonal immigrant labor yet they voted for immigrants to be rounded up and forbidden to enter the US. Their sales rely on exports (e.g. soybeans) and imports (tractor parts, fertilizer) yet they voted for a complete upending of the global trade system that benefitted them. So that they are complaining about the current economic climate while simultaneously politically being fully behind it is schadenfreude for many.
Both political parties are made up of constituent cohorts. All Republicans are not anti-immigrant, anti-trade junkies in the same way all Democrats are not anti-work socialists. I think you'll find farmers in particular are generally much more pro-trade and pro-immigrant than the rest of the party.
The story is these farmers voted for Trump despite him tilting against their best interest. But the reality is they probably put up with his views on immigration and trade hoping they would be more than offset by his views on land use and tax policy (and have been sorely mistaken).
I know that people really want to make schadenfreude out of this But when the shoe is on the other foot and Republicans make these same kind of ad hominem attacks they equally fall flat. No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
> these farmers voted for Trump despite him tilting against their best interest
There is a good amount of research that suggests people do not vote using reason, or necessarily consider their own best interests. Rather, it is suggested that most people who vote affiliate themselves with a political party that appeals to their interpretation of morality; and then they vote on tribal lines.
It's a little hard to feel bad for these people when they already saw how Trump didn't actually push their interests during his first term, and yet they voted for him again.
Meanwhile, the Project 2025 handbook was there for everyone to read, and Trump's rhetoric was based on cracking down on immigration (bye-bye, seasonal labor), beating up our trade partners (need to import farm tools? pay more!), and slashing federal government spending (haphazard and largely a failure to actually save money or tackle deficits or debt).
The 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act was a fine preview for more of the same in 2025, so I'm not sure what these voters were looking for when it comes to tax policy.
Land use is generally a state-level concern, so I'm not sure what they think Trump would be doing for them there.
I could buy it if we heard about reluctant Trump voters who don’t really like him and disagree with a bunch of his actions but reluctantly voted for him because they thought he was better than the alternative. This seems to be extremely rare, though. Maybe those voters just don’t get air time.
> All Republicans are not anti-immigrant, anti-trade junkies in the same way all Democrats are not anti-work socialists
Democrats are not anti-work socialists and never were. They never had rhetoric that would imply so. However, republicans do have anti-immigration, anti-trade rhetoric and politics.
> No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
Of course, because Biden was not hating police and was not a communist. Republican party however is exactly what it is accused of being here. And Trump is its ruler and champion.
Which policy related to Canada is affecting the grape business? I didn't see it referenced, and assumed that since it's being described as a trend over 3 years then it's not just about tariffs.
Us alcohol products unavailable in most of Canada. So there’s a fair bit of export gone missing. And European response is probably reducing demand for us product in favour of their own.
Ah, gotcha. I presume there's then substitution effects on both sides of the pond, but the US loses more on net from the Canadian shift from American to other wines.
In the drugs loving country that is the USA, now more than 25% of households have someone taking some "ozempic" like drug for dealing with obesity.
The consequence is that the Homer Simpsons do not feel the need to drink alcohol anymore.
We created a system for measuring future trends for a food company and the trend of people avoiding sugars and alcohol is the strongest now.
For people outside the US to understand, you need to know that all foods in the US supermarkets are flooded with sugars in a way that is hard to comprehend unless you come from outside. You have the highest obesity levels in the world.
Those drugs have secondary effects but obesity has too, and they work very well.
There's just no compelling reason to use alcohol anymore.
It used to be a universal social lubricant, but now people stay home - the only people drinking in public are drunkards. Not a great look.
It used to be considered "healthy" to drink a bit. Twenty-one drinks a week was considered normal. Now we have decades of research meta-analysis concluding, in no uncertain terms, that the only safe amount of alcohol is zero. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/alcohol-is-the-root-of-62-dise...
Alcohol increases anxiety. Given the zeitgeist and state of the world, it's not surprising consumers want to avoid spiking their cortisol in the evenings.
Alcohol is expensive. The cost of living is going up and wages are not. The budget has to adjust somehow - alcohol is an obvious place to make cuts.
Alcohol prevents the body from metabolizing real food. Fat burning stops while the metabolism shifts to rid the body of the toxins you just dumped in. Aside from the health impacts, you're gonna see this directly in your gut circumference via visceral fat. Considering the GLP-1 trend, beer gut is out of fashion.
So for me personally, and anyone else paying attention, there is no reason to touch alcohol. It's strictly poison and has no valid role in a human diet. Sorry farmers - maybe switch to growing something that provides nutrition and isn't toxic?
Agree that the loneliness epidemic is an issue. But why would alcohol be the solution? Sounds like you implicitly associate socialization with drinking.
The vast majority of people on this planet are teetotal. I guess they never have and never will socialize /s
Needing alcohol to socialize is not normal (though it has been normalized by some cultures). If you need alcohol to have fun, that's a sign of a serious problem that requires professional help.
Your link is a visualization of the data in the 2018 WHO global status report on alcohol and health, which is the same data I used. Quoting directly from that paper:
> Some 2.3 billion people are current drinkers. Alcohol is consumed by more than half of
the population in only three WHO regions – the Americas, Europe and Western Pacific.
Globally, the majority of people are non-drinkers. It's not even close. The maps obviously tell a different story on a per-country basis. And if you live in an area with a super-majority of drinkers - yeah it's going to feel like everyone in the world drinks. But the global data says otherwise.
Alcohol is just in a structural decline. From my experiences in Switzerland:
1. 10-15 years ago it was expected you would have 1-2 glasses of wine at lunch as a front office guy / banker while talking shop. Now you will get a trip to HR unless meeting a client or in a place that still allows it. I imagine similar things in other areas. I still see construction workers drinking a can at 6:30pm however.
2. For good reason, "we were both drunk and X happened" doesn't work as an explanation anymore. Turns out that was a big a part of it.
The only real place people are still "expected" to drink is the army (cos there is nothing else to do) or meeting some boomer client. Younger people just do other drugs/stimulants.
Same observation from Finland. Additionally, being even slightly drunk in front of children has become very no-no. I recently had a small gathering of other families with children at my home and I made the mistake of offering them some beers. Everyone declined and the looks I got were the same as if I had offered them crack cocaine.
I don't think it's all good, though, since a lot of social events that were previously facilitated by alcohol just disappear. Like who the fuck actually enjoys acquantainces' children's birthdays without a beer or two? Turns out people suck at socialising without alcohol, and if alcohol disappears, people just stay at home and play video games or something.
This is going to sound like I'm over generalizing and maybe even a bit... racist? and I already apologize for it, it's not my intention. I hope I can pass the actual message I'm trying to pass. So, let's go.
Doesn't Finland, like the other Nordic countries, have a long history of alcohol abuse and pushing against it (like, with draconian prices)? Isn't maybe just that policy "winning"? Also, couldn't this be yet another case where the Nordic are seen as "one step beyond" the rest like it was the case when fully digitalizing schools, only then to backpedal realizing it's not all so good and there are drawbacks that were not considered?
I say this to connect with the second part of your post, to which I fully agree: alcohol is not generally good for health and it can be abused but also small quantities here and there won't probably hurt you in a serious way and will give some social benefits like the ones you mentioned. (and the same applied to other light drugs as well!)
I'd say that here in Finland, the decline in alcohol use has more to do with global trends, especially with the younger generations. The problem though is that there has not been any replacement for the social lubrication required here for people to attempt to be social. Purely based on my own experiences, people are less social, go out less, and therefore use less alcohol.
Feels as if the death of religion is followed by the death of bars, restaurants and other places to go out to in the evening, especially after Covid, leaving even fewer places to meet people.
It's true that people up here tend to get very drunk collectively as the evening drags on, which has always bothered me as somebody who doesn't drink alcohol... First everybody's very dry and awkward, then it's fun for an hour or so, and then things start getting over the top and pretty mental. Compared with central Europe, people don't slow down a few glasses in.
But all that is changing as it seems many people just stopped going out at all. So people might drink less alcohol, but I'm not sure that indicates an improvement of mental health or social coherence. The internet is making people lonelier.
From my anecdotal experience in Sweden, I suspect it might have a lot to do with the lasting economic situation since Covid. People do not seem to be able to afford going out or having people over like they used to.
Prices have increased a lot, making the margins even harder to survive on for the majority.
Is it literally hard to survive? Even with a job and statistically nobody having children and a sparsely populated small country? Perhaps it is better to just not have a job and live on government welfare.
If that is unsustainable for the country then eventually something might change. Until then you have to play the hand you're dealt.
Yes, for a lot of people in the lower income bracket it is difficult to make ends meet[0].
[0]: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/ekonomiska-svarighete...
> Doesn't Finland, like the other Nordic countries, have a long history of alcohol abuse and pushing against it (like, with draconian prices)? Isn't maybe just that policy "winning"?
Yes and no; all the Nordic / Lutheran countries have some mildly prohibitionist policies like the Norwegian wine monopoly, and yes it gets very dark and depressing up there which led to alcohol abuse becoming a social problem in the early 20th century, but that situation was stable for years and the decline in alcohol consumption is a global phenomenon.
While the origins may be religious, I'd say the high taxes on alcohol and most alcoholic beverages only being available in state-run shops (Systembolaget/Vinmonopolet/Alko/Vínbúðin) is by now a 100% Nordic phenomenon.
The most interesting situation is actually in Iceland: full prohibition introduced 1915, wine legalized 1922, all other beverages legalized 1935 except for (of all things) beer with more than 2.25% ABV, which had to wait until 1 March 1989 (since then celebrated as "Beer Day") - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Iceland
17 US states have monopolies on the sale of alcohol at the distribution or retail level so it is not just a Nordic thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_sta...
I believe this is common in Canadian provinces as well?
No, more to do with health concerns and antisocial behaviour.
Denmark never had any kind of mild alcohol prohibitionist policies or restrictions
Alcoholism was a huge problem if you go back several 100 of years where home distillation was rampant, and there is indeed regulation and taxes to control it in Denmark. You can ask an LLM for more details. It's just not done the way say Sweden does it.
Finland's alcoholism-curbing policies date from the early twentieth century and the kind of abuse they were meant to curb was especially the drinking of spirits. Then, nothing changed for decades until, quite recently, beer sales have actually become more liberalized and you can buy higher-strength stuff in supermarkets.
Finland definitely has a history of binge drinking and straight up alcoholism. However, I don't think the state can take credit for consumption going down, since the decline in drinking among younger generations seems pretty much global at this point.
Exactly, the younger generations just stay at home, on the internet. So social drinking has mostly disappeared. Those that really want to get totally drunk probably still do though.
My impression is that decline can mostly be attributed to gen Z. They grew up with social media that made a better point to emphasis how dangerous alcohol is. Previous dominant media, at most, had very sterile disclaimers that alcohol is bad for you.
Romania has seen a similar decline in consumption (though still in top 3 across EU in consumption), such as that nowadays we have articles from media outlets (as a voice for the industry) that complain of the downward trend. While in reality we should be celebrating this change in culture!
In the US Gen Z doesn't drink because of social isolation. Drinking was always a social thing and drinking alone has a stigma associated with it. Also, THC use has become much more socially acceptable and that has replaced a lot of alcohol use.
Gen Z still parties and socializes, but their parties are constantly recorded and posted on social media. There's much higher stakes to getting wasted and making a fool out of yourself in the panopticon.
It is a generational thing, but IMO you've got the wrong root cause. Discussion of the dangers of drinking stems from people choosing not to drink, and people are choosing not to drink because they are attending the kinds of social gatherings that are lubricated by alcohol less.
As such, I'm hesitant to point to the decline in alcohol sales as a public health win. If people were drinking less simply because they were choosing to drink less, that's probably a public health win. If people are drinking less because their social lives have evaporated, that's probably really bad.
Your factors are real, but I think both elements are at play. I admit I could be biased as I see gen Z as more disciplined, locked in, from gyms to lifestyle.
Socialisation, or lack thereof, is a great problem for many people and newer generations raised "online", when you get for free at home endless social media distraction.
But even the 20 year olds I've met in bars were likely to stop drinking way sooner than us milenials, which still get plastered, at least on special occasions.
the article also explicitly called out that boomers aging out of the market is a driving factor.
its easy to forget just how freakishly large that cohort is and how they are all steeped in alcohol as the primary way to an altered state.
As they get too old to drink for various health reasons it makes sense that california wine especially would take the hit because boomers also have all the money so they are the ones buying fancy wine.
the younger gens not backfilling the demand contributes but it was never going to be at boomer levels anyway.
Get ready for a lot more stories like this as boomers stop doing all kinds of things... traveling, buying cars etc.
Of course we should be, but the line went down, therefore we need 600 think-pieces attempting to shame us for caring for our health.
Wife and I used to be avid drinkers but with the expansion of legal cannabis, it's just not as good of an option. I'll still make myself a negroni or an old fashioned on occasion, just because they're delicious, but I haven't drank-to-get-drunk in YEARS. If I'm actually trying to unwind (and who isn't given the sheer STATE of our world!) I'm spoiled for choices of substances that both don't interact with my depression nearly as badly as alcohol and, as a bonus, don't make me gain weight like an inflation fetish character.
The alcohol industry won spectacularly for decades a game of public policy and image where alcohol, a substance connected to industrial quantities of human death and suffering, was somehow the "accepted and normal" way to get fucked up when you wanted to be, even though again, numerous alternatives existed that were better for you. They're going to go through a similar process to tobacco I think, which is to say: it'll still be around, but it will shrink to an industry sized appropriately for the actual demand of it's product.
No, no its not the Finns nor the russians. Its the latvian and estonian harbours :P
> Isn't maybe just that policy "winning"?
Of course not. The trend is global and has no connection to government policy in Nordic countries.
> alcohol is not generally good for health and it can be abused but also small quantities here and there won't probably hurt you in a serious way
Hate to 'uMm aCktUalLy...' but hm... actually...
https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
Their statement was appropriately hedged. They didn't claim small amounts were harmless, just that it wouldn't hurt in a "serious" way. Your rush to "um actually" someone meant you missed what was being said and "um actually"'d a statement that existed only in your mind. Anyway...
Everyone's threshold for "serious" harm is different.
For adult men, if you drink fewer than 15 drinks per week but greater than zero, the expected decrease of average lifespan is measured in months not years. Obviously more than zero. Is that "serious" enough to not partake? Up to each person.
My bad.
I have an anecdotal situation dealing with dementia ridden parents from chronic drinking. And similar with grandparents. My risk tolerance is zero for alcohol. besides the lifespan being reduced: quality of life tanks off of a fucking cliff, dragging everyone you love and who loves you down there too.
Sorry to hear that, but your experiences aren't universal. Absolutism is a sensible option especially if there's been problems in the family. It's not the only sensible option for everyone.
> experiences aren't universal
agreed: but considering the ratio of friends who are in similar situations, I suspect the group I'm in is larger than you assume.
In the US the reverse happened. Although people drink less, you do get offered alcohol everywhere. I don't remember it being present at places like zoos, kids indoor playgrounds, state fairs, etc. I was even at a birthday at a public park at 10am Sunday morning and saw some White Claws being passed around.
People drink less but there is less stigma around alcohol and obvious other once illegal drugs.
I think it very much depends on what groups. Because taboos on alcohol in formerly kosher environments are new (~2016+?), there's uneven adherence.
You saw the same thing with smoking in the 90s in the US. Kids nowadays wouldn't believe the amount of bitching there was that you couldn't smoke inside restaurants, etc.
And I get it -- cultural assumptions changing is messy and can feel confusing to people.
PS: Also alcohol sold in public spaces has relatively high margins, so that explains that.
I think smoking is going through a mini-resurgence right now.
I think back to my childhood and smoking was everywhere. My high school (graduated in 1989) had a smoking area for students. Cigarette smoke wafted out of the teacher's lounge. Kids would light up as soon as they got off the bus on a field trip. I don't have many specific memories of it, but people must have reeked.
Alcohol was also huge. We had a fifth year of high school (grade 13) and so there were plenty of 19 year old students and the drinking age was 19. Students would buy beer on their lunch period for the weekend and store it in their locker and nobody thought anything of it.
Dang, you sound like you were in school in Ontario at the same time as me? I also graduated from grade 13 in 1989...
Smoking is a plant-based alternative to vaping.
I remember alcohol being present at all those places since the 80s.
Genuinely feels like we're optimising for a less human way to interact with each other in pursuit of some nicer statistics (hooray people live two tenths of a year longer). Why even have children if everything surrounding them has to be miserable these days.
I do have a feeling that the social structures, and perhaps even biology, have evolved over centuries with alcohol present to grease the wheels. It can allow a higher baseline of introversion / neuroticism (which facilitates higher performance in some areas but worse socialising), with the ability to drink to boost the social aspect when needed. Chesterton's beer, in other words.
But at what cost ? If your society needs alcohol to help the introverted and slightly neurotic fit in then you are just incentivising those people to have substance abuse issues.
There's a compelling argument that civilization itself is a bunch of scaffolding around beer making. Human social lives have been shaped by alcohol since before agriculture. Conflating having a few drinks with substance abuse is like saying eating lunch is an eating disorder.
Society being healthier is a good thing, but not at the cost of human socialization.
This is sad to hear.
On the whole I think it's a terrible thing that people have started taking themselves too seriously.
> Everyone declined and the looks I got were the same as if I had offered them crack cocaine.
should have offered them some THC to chill them out :P
In Eastern Europe it's still quite usual to have a few drinks at parties but we don't have it at lunch because one would most likely drive to work, so then it's a big no-no. Bulgaria and Greece have 0.5‰ tolerance for alcohol while driving and also allow public drinking (except where explicitly prohibited), but I would still not do it because it's easy to exceed the limit or get involved in an accident and then it's your fault regardless. Thus one might end up having a glass or two in the evening, after work hours. I'd possibly have a beer or two in the evening during dog walks or some wine in the evening with my wife. When we walk by the pub, my dog almost always pulls me towards the terrace.
In France they still drink a glass or two during lunch break. I've seen office workers in La Défense, where one would normally commute using Paris Métro Line 1.
I started to correct you that the limit was surely 0.05%, but then I saw you snuck a per-mille sign in, instead of a percent sign. Nicely done
Wait, what? I had no idea this symbol existed!
Same ! Very cool
Is it actually measured per mile ? As in if your a mile or less from your destination you can have a higher blood alcohol ?
No. Per-mile just means “per 1000 parts” just like per-cent means „per 100 parts”
> Like who the fuck actually enjoys acquantainces' children's birthdays without a beer or two?
That's really just a personal trait. I love going to my kid's friend's birthdays because we get to talk to the other parents who have become good friends as well, plus we don't have to look after the kids as much. "Adult time" and we know they're having fun. I don't have to drink in those.
I guess not everyone is that outgoing and not every parent group is as friendly as mine but it's hard to see getting drunk as a necessary counter to that.
> Turns out people suck at socialising without alcohol, and if alcohol disappears, people just stay at home and play video games or something.
Again, a personal trait. It's extremely common here in Brazil to drink but it's also very common to just not drink and have as much fun. Someone saying they need to have alcohol to enjoy themselves at a gathering is not going to be looked at very kindly, as if everyone else was just so boring they had to intoxicate themselves to bear through it.
As an introvert kids' birthday parties are purgatory for me.
And that's what the beer is for. Your ancestors figured this out thousands of years ago: alcohol makes socializing easier, and more enjoyable.
> Someone saying they need to have alcohol to enjoy themselves at a gathering is not going to be looked at very kindly, as if everyone else was just so boring they had to intoxicate themselves to bear through it.
Well duh, which is why nobody would ever say that out loud. Doesn't stop anyone from thinking it, though.
I say shit like this out loud. Usually when I'm drunk.
Whenever I go to one of my kid's friends' birthday parties, it's basically split into two groups: 1. Boomers / GenX "the grandparents" sitting together drinking beer and socializing, and 2. GenZ / Millennials "the parents" sitting alone scrolling their phones.
Well, fuck you. Please.
> Like who the fuck actually enjoys acquantainces' children's birthdays without a beer or two?
That is a fair point, but personally I enjoy the time during which my child is playing with their peers and not trying to have me as a substitute for these kinds of interactions.
At this exact moment there is another post [1] on HN from Derek Thompson talking about the >70% drop over the past few decades in having other people over to socialize for dinner. Correlation is not causation, and...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49891295
> Like who the fuck actually enjoys acquantainces' children's birthdays without a beer or two?
You have a reason to go there, which is socialising with the parents presumably. If you can't have fun with people without drinking and then blame it on the lack of alcohol... that's no good.
The reason you go to kids' birthday parties because your child was invited and they're too young to go alone.
You can socialize and you kind of have to, but they've probably invited every classmate from preschool or whatever, so there's 20 people you probably haven't met before, have nothing in common except having kids the same age, and will probably never see again (except maybe at the next birthday party). And often the parties are held in a McDonalds or something, so catering is chicken nuggets and shitty cake with a Paw Patrol motif.
> And often the parties are held in a McDonalds or something,
God, what a great childhood I had...
I can't even imagine a birthday party being held in some joint or something.
In my country a kid having a birthday always meant homemade food and fun (up to the age of 15 or something).
I'm sympathetic to parent (both ways) on this one. Acquaintances' kids birthdays are and should be mostly about the kids.
The kids are friends: that's why the parents are there. The parents may or may not particularly vibe with each other.
And a small amount of alcohol does take the sharp edges off social interactions with someone who might otherwise annoy you.
In my experience it also often makes that mildly annoying person a lot more annoying (as in their behaviour)
I get the sentiment, but it seems to me like a crutch that should be worked on getting rid of. It can't be that painful to be with other people, if it is, we need to work on ourselves and the culture. The jump from "I'm bored/uncomfortable" -> "might as well get drunk" seems wrong and a slippery slide to boot.
Human beings have been complaining about other people at social events being bores since antiquity. There is no work on oneself and the culture that will, at a societal level, make all such interactions pleasant.
Seneca sharing a quote in Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 7 [~62 CE] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...
>> Democritus says: “One man means as much to me as a multitude, and a multitude only as much as one man.”
Having a beer or two at a kids birthday party is a world away from getting trashed at a college party. Personally, I need a drink to loosen up and not be so uptight around casual acquaintances. I offer the same courtesy when I host birthday parties.
Having a drink or two is not the same thing as getting drunk.
HR ruined everything didn't they?
I heard a comedian make the point that HR only began to exist once women became more prevalent in the workforce. And at that point you do need much more oversight. And having women in the workforce is positive since they're ~50% of the population and offer distinct experiences.
But I wonder the unseen downsides of having HR so powerful in an organization. From useless screening of candidates, to overly corrective actions by everyone terrified HR will essentially fire them. Maybe it would be better to have 1-2 glasses of wine during lunch occasionally. They're extra-judicial, easily the most powerful group in an organization with little oversight.
My guess is that you're in the US. Here in the Netherlands, while there's plenty to criticize or laugh about, HR is also responsible for pensions, benefits, workplace safety, reintegration from sickness, ensuring that staff is well trained for their role, etc.
At my org they also organize the Thursday evening drinks session :)
> pensions, benefits, workplace safety, reintegration from sickness,
We use Justworks and they do that all for us. You're technically an employee of Justworks, and their name shows up on your paychecks. You hook into their health and 401k benefits, and they check all the workplace safety boxes. For instance, they'll mail you posters you legally have to put up in your office to ensure you're telling employees about overtime. HR plays literally no role in any of time apart from maybe selecting the health plans, something we do once a year and roll over every time.
> ensuring that staff is well trained for their role
What does an HR person know about training for your role? Is HR cross-trained in engineering for instance? Seems wildly different from my experience. HR would ineffectively screen candidates and ask you about buzz words. So they'll ask "do you have experience in Javascript" and I'll say "no, but I have a lot of experience in Typescript" and they'll just screen me out because they'll have no context.
And HR staff is also much more social so they'll pick up on awkwardness and screen there as well, when in many fields like engineering, the tolerance of awkwardness is much higher.
Surely this just means Justworks is your HR team?
Uhh… that sounds a bit weird. Your contract is with a random third party? So your company could just fuck you at any moment?
Being from the US, I hadn't considered that HR could be anything other than employee hostile.
> Here in the Netherlands, while there's plenty to criticize or laugh about, HR is also responsible for pensions, benefits, workplace safety, reintegration from sickness, ensuring that staff is well trained for their role, etc.
Mostly true for big companies in the US as well.
HR is a powerful organization for a reason. Companies everywhere operate in a legal environment, and 90% of what HR does is keep the company from getting sued.
> 90% of what HR does is keep the company from getting sued
Which people would be wise to remember. HR is there to protect the company, not you or your co-workers. Sometimes these two things align but not always.
I believe this is the legal team. There are a lot of self imposed restrictions HR puts on companies, like the can't have a drink during lunch, but I don't understand how ignoring such rules leads to getting sued.
For sex stuff, sure, which was my point about women. A former employee can sue for being fired or harassed, etc. And I guess having everyone jump through hoops with training about all the various isms can provide plausible deniability when something illegal happens. But I think you're overstating the role HR plays here.
> A former employee can sue for being fired or harassed
Yes. This is where all the rules come from. It's just like airline safety or workplace safety: for almost every rule, you can find the incident which caused it to be put in place.
The problem here is you not believing sexual harassment is real, or a real problem. There have been enough women bullied out of jobs they loved by harassment from male co-workers, over and over again, and enough of them have won their lawsuits or tribunals against the employers, that there are rules against this, which will be enforced.
And enough people will have used "I was drinking" as an excuse for harassment that companies feel the need to limit their risk by banning drinking.
People get annoyed at HR for being a "compliance" role, but it's the same phenomenon as hating the people checking the fire exits, the ladders, PAT testing all your electrical devices (this may be UK specific?), making you wear a hard hat and safety boots, or making you reconcile the cash in the register with the receipts.
> The problem here is you not believing sexual harassment is real, or a real problem
???
Where do you get that from? I do think it's a problem and it becomes a problem because we accept mixed-sex work environments. HR isn't there to protect women from getting harassed, they're mostly there to protect management. Sexual harassment is still illegal, whether HR exists or not.
I don't think HR ladies are roaming factory floors making sure people are wearing hardhats. That's a managers responsibility and the company has legal obligations.
So when exactly has that non-mixed-sex workplace existed? It hasn't, the mixed nature was just buried under ungodly amounts of hierarchy full of gender defaults. With harassment just taken as a given. Partially held in check by, well, good guys who I guess have always existed, and the ones from the dark ages must have been very good given the lack of external checks, but those 20 or whatever percent who weren't must have made life quite miserable for those at the wrong side of the default imbalance. Yes, progress has happened but we should still have more of it, not less. And HR plays a role in this progress, even if at times it appears a little annoying or excessive.
The non-mixed-sex workplace was definitely a thing in the early 20th century that required explicit effort to change.
There was literally a legislative marriage bar in the Irish Civil Service from 1924 till 1973.
The marriage bar forced female civil servants in Ireland to resign from their jobs when they got married and stopped married women from joining the permanent civil service.
We were far from the only country to have such mandates, and it was done so as an equivalence with the governance processes of the private sector. Divorce was only legalised in Ireland 1995.
How many lady sailors, how many lady soldiers, how many lady construction workers, how many lady ditch diggers, how many lady truckers?
In the past (and still today in many places), most of the workforce were not working in mixed gender places. Just take a look at photographic evidence of the many factories that only employed women.
Drinking at lunch is a great example. The company can get sued for that.
Not specifically for that, but if something does go wrong afterwards it makes the company much more likely to be liable for not preventing it.
Yes, that's what I meant. Employers are the deep pocket defendants that might get roped into a lawsuit resulting from bad behavior on the part of their employees.
The only problems with that reasoning is that women have been in the workplace for hundreds of years (domestic service, textiles, etc), and human resources started appearing in about 1900, approximately 50 years before mixed workplaces were common.
Mixed workplaces are more problematic. Most industries were almost exclusively single sex and things worked well without HR
"Things worked well without HR". Do you assume that all problems in the workplace are/were sex-related and between heterosexual men and women?
If you were right, literary works like Nikolai Gogol's "The overcoat" wouldn't exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overcoat
Most industries were almost exclusively single sex and things worked well without HR
HR was invented because workplaces didn't work well, and that was about 50 years before mixed workplaces were common. You're just projecting your biases and ignoring the facts.
No you can't just give people free rein to sexually harass the female staff.
You can frequently drink with HR at biotechs.
And for what benefit? 9/10 ”problems“ HR ”solves“ were created by them in the first place. HR is a net negative to society.
That is over the top. HR on the whole protects the employees and the organization. The experience you reference is not my experience at all and sounds disingenuous. We don't get to do whatever we want in the workplace, there are social structures that need to be adhered to. Like with any power structure there are people who will maximize their control for its own sake which is unfortunate but not an excuse to dismiss the whole concept.
Is that really HR or a reflection of the social environment in your specific country. I never found HR to be a problem in Norway.
I'd be very surprised if a full review didn't reveal that early HR more often existed to protect high position males against females in the workplace.
Behaviors and cultural norms don't change overnight, and HR is ultimately subordinate to leadership, especially in private companies with partnership structures, etc.
Modern HR feels like a better balance, with the caveat that it will usually protect the company from any employee.
Surely a comedian isn't the right person for this analysis.
The first HR departments were created to defuse feminist agitation for equality in the workplace. They were place in opposition to women's equality, not in alignment to it.
Why do you believe that HR has little oversight? HR reports to the bosses same as everybody else. They aren't some rogue insurgent organization within corporations.
I don't think we can blame this one on HR, people just aren't drinking as much alcohol, all over the developed world.
The US isn't even an outlier. I'm not sure why, I don't buy the health reason argument, since I don't think people pay attention to health studies. And they have been smoking (marijuana) which is terrible for the lungs and has other health issues. And there are problems with obesity.
It's not because of health consciousness.
Overall, people aren't drinking or having sex or going out as much, these are all in decline.
People are more neurotic now because of ubiquitous gamification and scoring. Health and aging and looks are scored, alcohol will cost you. Appearing controlled and on brand is a game, alcohol throws the game off. We’ve chosen a dry panopticon.
if we can be in offices now without regressive troglodytes in positions of authority freely making loud racist (and completely personalized) insults directed at their non-white peers and subordinates, to the guffaws of all the other men in the room (this is an actual thing I witnessed as a young intern at a defense contractor in the late 1980s, and no I was not the victim. to get a racist incident so glaring that even in 1988, it stays in the mind of a young white 18 year old kid for 40 years, means it had to be pretty bad), HR probably didn't ruin exactly everything.
Loads of women in the workforce in WWII. Was there anything like HR? (Not counting the recruiting departments, which were focused on finding & retaining workers in a very tight labor market.)
Instead of "women in the workforce", I'd say it was changing society and social norms. A century-ish ago, in quite a few sorts of places, workspace disputes might well be settled with fists. (Yes, there were many norms and unwritten rules about that.) Post-WWII, there was a long trend of gentrifying social mores, which discouraged such things. New laws and legal norms encouraged lawsuits over things previously tolerated, or settled informally. And more than just women, civil rights laws and norms pushed into the workplace. Bring in the lawyers, reporters, new public ideals - and a business really needed an HR Dept., to prevent disasters.
(Yes, this pretty is US-specific.)
Alcohol is a terrible drug. IMO it is a great thing that drinking at work is so frowned upon that it is basically verboten.
Yea I don’t get all the moping in this thread about alcohol being in decline.
In my country it was wayyy to socially acceptable (almost required) to get blackout drunk every weekend; people fighting; drunk drivers; the amount of alcoholics destroying their life because it’s so accessible.
Don’t get me wrong i enjoy a drink once in a while, even getting drunk sometimes but overall it’s a terrible terrible drug.
According to the book "Drunk", the reason you drink with people is it's more likely their true self comes out and you can more easily find out if they are trustworthy and worth doing business with. Not saying that therefore you should drink, nor do I know if it can actually be backed up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_(book)
I suspect that alcohol was a technology invented to protect the society from psychopaths. The psychopaths do not have instinctive empathy, but they can pretend. Alcohol ruins their ability to keep control, so when they get drunk, they will say or do something crazy that you will remember the next day.
It would make sense that when psychopaths get the power, they will eliminate the detectors.
Lol I would love to see how he argues that alcohol increases creativity. This is one of those things that sound plausible but very debatable if true or not.
I think it's more likely that it reduces your tendency to discard ideas that on the surface seem bad. Some of those seemingly bad ideas will turn out to be good, so if you take them seriously you'll look more creative, even though you didn't actually come up with any additional ideas.
Yes even that framing is a bit extreme. It increases your risk tolerance. So you're more open to new creative ideas, they don't even have to be that crazy, merely not the status quo.
I have Claude for this now
Go home Claude, you're drunk.
Uninvited
In my own case it does (or at least the first one does) because it reduces inhibition from creative impostor syndrome.
It also helped occasionally in severe OCD crises when no other strategy would break a cycle of compulsion: literally a single shot of alcohol will.
And it can help if I am stuck in self-defeating ADHD loops.
None of these things are advisable or worth the health damage even small amounts of alcohol could be causing. The only thing that is worth say a dozen units per year is reducing social anxiety. There are people I only know because I had a rare drink.
There is the mysterious Ballmer peak after all.
Weed massively increases creativity in everybody I asked, sure as hell does for me. Its not very controllable, ideas comes semi-randomly and works with topic processed previously, but damn so many results are actually good and stand test of time (I mean decades, like apartment interior design).
Alcohol? Social lubricant for sure, but creativity is contained only in the mind of a drunken fool who thinks better of his ideas than he should. That I never experienced, nor have witnessed and I certainly didn't avoid such situations.
Guess we'll have to ask Jackson Pollock. Wait, he died in an accident while drunk driving.
While I don't agree or disagree, we had a rule with my grad school colleagues and prof that we couldn't have certain discussions if four people had a pint in hand and the fifth was there drinking water, taking notes lol.
> the reason you drink with people is it's more likely their true self comes out and you can more easily find out if they are trustworthy and worth doing business with.
This doesn't work when you're a person being encouraged to drink in an asymmetric power dynamic and it turns out the people you're drinking with are monsters. You end up in a tragic story like what happened in the Dartmouth Predator Professor Gang and perhaps the recent Cornell case as well.
College students have basically stopped drinking. I had a recent Berkeley college grad tell me no one drinks at Berkeley anymore because they're afraid it will shrink their brain. Things are just so competitive that having fun in college is a complete afterthought. It's constantly chasing grades, internships, side projects, networking, job interviews etc.
Alcohol is going the way of cigarettes.
Not in the UK from what I can see, there's stories about it in the news but try actually going to hackney on a saturday - it's full of 22 year olds drinking (and also often smashing loads of bag...).
Maybe that's not a representative sample but young people still want to socialise and at that age you can get away with it so why not.
Having said that, the UK is absolutely a nation of pissheads, the US has always has that puritanical streak
There's a pretty strong observation bias when it comes to college drinking. The social gatherings of basically anybody who does drink ends up involving drinking, which pushes out the non-drinkers, until you end up with two completely distinct social circles. To add to the effect, alcohol is wildly useful in socializing with strangers, so the non-drinkers know far fewer people.
Thus, if you ask someone who does drink they'll probably say "everybody drinks, except for a few people", and if you ask someone who doesn't, they'll assume most people don't, except for the minority of people getting loudly drunk in public. That was true even where I was at school, where polling found that 70% of the student body was drinking on the weekends.
BS. They just replaced alcohol with weed and a bit of amphetamines.
The same phenomenon holds for both wine and baijiu — young people are drinking less of either one. In China, over the past years, even Moutai, the country's most famous liquor brand, has seen its sales decline. This really does seem to be a global trend.
It’s because alcohol fucking sucks.
Personally I microdose THC via an extraction I make myself(somewhat ironically using alcohol). Can’t do it in the mornings as I wish though, society still hasn’t caught up with a more heterogeneous drug use, only caffeine and tobacco are erlaubt…
I wish I could do anything with THC. It's not illegal under Ohio (where I live) law anymore.
But my job involves chemical plants and oil refineries, and they use DISA, and DISA drug tests everyone thoroughly.
I can count on getting a test that involves hair, urine, and breath samples at least twice per year. (It's supposed to be annual and random, but "random" seems to be rather heavily-weighted.)
THC hangs out way too long for that.
It's stupid: A person can be completely ripped on booze every night and cocaine occasionally, or live entirely in a world of psychedelic drugs like LSD or mescaline and that's... fine, I guess?
But smoking a bowl will ruin them on those tests.
I have an acquaintance who works for Chevron in a normal office job. In California, only the refinery workers get regular drug tests. In Texas, everyone does. And this dude used to smoke a fair amount of weed. It’s a good job, so he stays clean, but there’s really no reason to require it of someone in his role - he has never even been to one of their refineries.
I work inside of these plants, but only just barely. I'm not turning wrenches and cutting pipes and stuff; instead,.I work on the back ends of their radio systems.
I just drive over to the radio shanty near the tower, park, and walk inside to poke at a computer or move a wire or whatever.
A friend of mine does work on the corpo AV systems for some of these same places. This doesn't ever put him inside the plant; he's always separated from it by a magical chain-link fence.
He was rather surprised when I told him how arduous the drug testing was, as he was never required to do anything like that (and wouldn't stand a chance at passing if he were).
Taking THC at night is not good for you health either. That's going to mess with your sleep, which will have all kinds of long-term health impacts on you.
That's not been my experience at all. I sleep like a baby thanks to it. We're all different with different needs. Read the sibling comment from 'cromka'. That's my experience as well.
I'm taking a break due to anticipating a drug screening, but REM suppression/interruption is a thing with cannabis and I've been having horrible trauma nightmares without it. Drug screenings are anti-human and it's ridiculous that due to federal prohibition companies aren't required to respect medical cannabis prescriptions.
I struggle with ADHD, have been for years, and no pharmaceutical drug helps, while they all have severe side effects. Meanwhile every time I take a single drag of my friend’s joint, I feel most relaxed and have most coherent thoughts, while able to pull the exact words from memory I need. A single drag, mind you.
I have not heard a single doctor talk about microdosing THC as a cure for ADHD and I wonder if my experience is coincidental or there’s really something there?
This is basically what I've replaced with my tincture. I used to roll the smallest doobies you can imagine(one drag joints basically). However since it's terrible for the lungs, I've completely replaced it with my shot. The effect is slightly different but it works well against my ADHD.
Definitely something, there's an intersection between THC and neurodivergence for sure. One line of thought relates to the amygdala, the idea is that reducing the activity in that brain regions creates a sort of "space" for other things to get processed, like emotional memories from the hippocampus, so the limbic system is involved.
The subjective experience has a loose correlation to mindfulness meditation which has also been linked to the amygdala/hippocampus processing loop.
I'll leave this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AutisticAdults/comments/1pn21r7/why...
There's no studies, but a lot of anecdata.
this is my experience, with very low dose edibles
I still enjoy drinking a bit but agree with your take in principal. I'd rather smoke a joint, take an edible, or drink a thc drink most nights than go for alcohol, and it strikes me as odd that although it's been fully legal in my country for years, it would still be wildly more taboo than alcohol in the workplace, even though nearly everyone probably does something outside of work.
I think this is very subjective.
The only time I smoked a joint I thought I was gonna die. Never fucking again, lol.
Nothing beats taste and effects of small dose of whiskey with some fruut or vodka with an appetizer. Or a few glasses of wine.
Consider that perhaps what you smoked, is the equivalent of a newbie chugging down bottle of whiskey.
I don't recommend smoking/inhaling weed at all. It's bad for your lungs.
Same here. I've tried edibles multiple times as they're legal here. The experience ranged from mildly bad to horrible. I either felt like a zombie (not relaxed) or became paranoid and anxious. I had to come to the conclusion it just doesn't gel with me.
CBD does seem to help with my joint and muscle pains though.
Same here. I've never had a good experience with weed. Smoking it or edibles. I feel like the former doesn't do anything for me and the latter just sends me into a panic state from which I can't come down for several hours.
> 10-15 years ago it was expected you would have 1-2 glasses of wine at lunch as a front office guy / banker while talking shop. Now you will get a trip to HR unless meeting a client or in a place that still allows it.
It's been like this in America for decades. Even places with "beer on tap" the expectation is you don't drink until after the work day. If you were pulling the tab at lunch you'd get a talk from your boss and eventually HR
More Americanization of Europe?
It wasn't this way always (obv?). In the early 80s it was still acceptable for the entire engineering dept to get sloshed at lunch w/o any expectation of getting work done upon return. The salesdroid would sometimes accompany us. This was at a very large mostly defense contractor on the east coast of Florida.
I have the inverse experience in Europe; my former boss would almost force me to drink when we went out for lunch sometimes. There was rarely a meeting with him where I didn’t come home buzzed.
How much of this is due to famous podcasters? There's the Huberman obsession with alcohol being poisonous, the looksmaxxing, and then you can argue, good science that shows it's bad.
It's influenced me - I was drinking probably 2-3 drinks every night for decades, and lately I've cut down by 60-80 percent weekly. That's still poisonous though, if you ask the GenZ social media world.
I'm pretty sure the causality is backwards. People aren't drinking less because they hear people saying it's poison, people are more willing to tolerate people calling it poison because they're drinking less. People have preached about the evils of drinking to excess as far back as we have records of people discussing stuff. It just got ignored, because it's a crucial social lubricant, and thus everybody imbibes anyway. With the rise of addictive social media and gaming, we've seen a decrease in socialization in meatspace, and that's where people drink. If you're missing out on the positive aspects of alcohol anyway, then it's a lot easier to listen to people talking about the negative aspects. And then those voices get amplified to justify not doing the thing you weren't doing anyway.
We have hard data now on the negative impacts of alcohol, even from moderate amounts. Research shows it is carcinogenic. Back when I was a kid there was talk of light drinking being good for your health.
We also have strong data on how its bad for your sleep.
Much of the talk of alcohol being poison in the past was from drunk driving, spousal abuse, spending all the families money. This largely applied to drunks. But now the data has come in a way that doesn't involve any of these traditional ills is still bad for you.
It's probably a combo of the legit science that there really is no safe/good level of drinking from a health perspective (and previous studies saying otherwise are bunk), and all the podcasters/influencers extolling the virtues of not drinking.
Why We Sleep really impacted my view on drinking. It really does mess with your sleep, so I keep my drinking to occasional and on the light side.
Wearables also play a role in this. I had two beers between like 5:30-7:00 on Saturday and my sleep data was messed up. We are talking two 5.5% beers at dinner on a 220 lb man.
It's much harder to ignore the fact that alcohol has all these negative effects.
Still, I think drinking occasionally while socializing is a good thing, and that people becoming hermits is a huge negative.
How badly was the sleep messed up, is the trade off? Sometimes two beers is useful as a social lubricant or just a relaxing aid. Stress at work and spiraling rumination does a terrible thing to my sleep as well.
I think there's optimization culture and then there's excess. Drinking 2-3 drinks every night for 15 years probably was excessive for me. But one or two nights where sleep is affected per week is tolerable. Life is short, and deprivation might make it a little longer but life's not supposed to feel long (as in living life means doing a little bit of harm here and there).
>I still see construction workers drinking a can at 6:30pm however.
You mean AM, right?
Is that true about the army? Seems like in the navy they do everything they can to stop sailors from drinking (probably resulting in the opposite effect)
Wonder how much of this is social stigma related to an ever present mobile phone camera presence vs it's just healthier to not drink.
> Alcohol is just in a structural decline
Seem so on the whole in Europe in higher-income countries. But the decline seems to be slowing.
(It is surprisingly difficult to find annual alcohol consumption statistics on google. It feels like swimming upstream. It keeps giving me data on alcohol-associated deaths, or total alcohol+tobacco spending!)
WHO dataset, alcohol pure litres total per capita annual [0]
Switzerland (4th biggest decrease):
2020: 11.4 litres
2024: 8.8 litres
UK:
2000: 12.3 litres
2024: 10.4 litres
Ireland:
2000: 14.78 litres
2024: 10.27 litres
There are some countries which have seen an increase over that time period:
Bulgaria +2.33
Latvia +1.99
Portugal +2.10
Moldova +4.14
Bosnia and Herzegovina +1.86
[0] https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-detai...
10 litres alcohol is about 100 bottles of wine a year (exactly 100 at 13.33% alcohol content).
I drink a lot of wine, but 1 full bottle is too much to have regularly. A half bottle - two generous glasses - is more reasonable, but you'll still feel it the next day. And 10 litres of alcohol puts you at 8 generous glasses a week.
I reckon this is still quite a lot of alcohol.
> surprisingly difficult to find annual alcohol consumption statistics on google. It feels like swimming upstream.
Seems like the WHO might not have generated a per country per capita alcohol consumption dataset after 2020? Imagine COVID + US defunding in 2025 (~20% of budget) caused a lot of turmoil in lower priorities. :(
Average person drinks 9 litres of alcohol per year factoid actualy just statistical error. average person drinks 3 litres per year. Wendt Georg aka "Norm", who spends the majority of his life in a bar in Boston is an outlier adn should not have been counted
NORM!
Yet
https://statbase.org/data/usa-alcohol-consumption-per-capita...
Suggests it increasing
2020 - 9.6
2021 - 9.76
2022 - 9.77
2023 - 9.56
2024 - 9.56
2025 - no data
The peak was 4 years ago and the stats you shared seem to agree with the “news” here that it’s decreasing recently.
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance-reports/...
Looks to me like the real peak was the late 70’s / early 80’s with beer on a steady decline ever since and wine/spirits not quite replacing it.
You're looking at covid. Look at the 25 year period from .90 in 2000 up to 9.3 by 2008, then flat until covid, then a bump during covid times before lowering at 9.5
Sure you can say it's reduced from a peak which happened to coincide with an unprecedented pandemic. Wake me when it's back to the 9.3 norm of the 2010s let alone the 9 it was around 2000.
Now it's quite possible that fewer people are drinking at all, but of those who are drinking, they are drinking more.
Or it's quite possible that annecdotes about who you see in the gym and on instagram are just annecdotes
(for what it's worth I have seen data showing under 30s are drinking less in 2025 than under 30s drank in 2005, or 1985, etc, which would imply over 30s are drinking more to make up for it, but I don't have it to hand and it may not have been US specific)
You seem to have lept to a conclusion before you finished reading my post. I did not focus on Covid.
In the US maybe, but in Europe weakening demand for wine is certainly a very public and well-known issue. Especially in France.
>> The only real place people are still "expected" to drink is the army (cos there is nothing else to do)
No. The correct answer was Navy. Those in the navy drink like fish. And the air force use only redbull.
Same with anything that requires a security clearance. I know a lot of good engineers and they all tell me it's tacitly accepted a few of their coworkers are functioning alcoholics. Because that's the only drug they're legally allowed to do
Declining usage of alcohol is one of the major reasons of declining birth rates and an epidemic of loneliness in white countries.
I think the underlying causal factor of both is actually phones/social media.
yet muslims dont drink and are habitually on their phones, with no issues reproducing.
I actually think lack of religion is one of the major reasons for a declining birth rate. The church was an important third space.
Even now in the Korean-American community, the running joke is that if one suddenly starts going to church in their 20s, it's only because they're looking for a romantic partner.
Muslims also, as a generalization, have richer regular socialization opportunities via religion.
If the bar was the primary Western common area ("Where everybody knows your name..."), then its disuse leaves nothing to replace it.
Between men and men. Not at all between men and women
The "Bangladesh Miracle" says otherwise: by intensive effort the birth rate was brought down from 6.7 to 1.89.
(people keep forgetting how much reducing population growth and teenage pregnancy has been an explicit policy goal for decades! Getting it down to replacement rate is good, now we're arguing about the other direction needlessly)
That's because they have arranged marriages, and Muslim women have no choice in the matter. Men don't need to be good at socializing with women to reproduce when women are treated as property.
I think they have practically unrelated causal factors.
About children the case is quite obvious. We created the cultural environment in which children are considered no less human than productive members of society and deserve if not the same amount of resources, then more. This order aligns well both with Western worldview and with human biological nature, so people are easily accepting and strengthening it.
But if we are spending on a child as many resources as on productive members of society, that means for fertility rate 2 we should forgo half of our resources. So on average to forgo half of your work for children are not very tempting, but to spend on children less is sociocultural unacceptable. The only solution? Less children.
I think fertility rate 1.5 is already pretty high for such environment and only show how strong biological drive to procreate for humans is. And government's attempts to increase birth rates by spending more seems like rather terrible idea: that only will increase cultural expectation on children costs and effectively will lower the birth rate even more.
Citation STRONGLY needed. Best case would be correlation, not a causal relationship, between factors that limit alcohol consumption and things causing lower birth rates and "epidemic loneliness".
Some counter theories: People have fewer kids not because they drink less, but because children are extremely expensive, wage growth has been stagnant, women make up a larger share of the workplace (and don't want to lose their spot), and birth control is more readily available.
People are lonely because: women are capable of larger roles in the workforce and it's upended social expectations, therapy has caused people to avoid others that they deep destructive/negative in their lives, technology has caused us all to be alienated, or society has shifted but culture hasn't caught up to these changes (assuming they're lonely at all and not just experiencing the same existence previous generations did but now with constant news cycles and the ability to tap into 24/7 feeds of people having fun).
> I still see construction workers drinking a can at 6:30pm however.
At least here in Germany, this is all but gone. Our version of OSHA cracked down on that hard simply because of all the accidents that happen when you combine alcohol, a lot of intake of alcohol due to the reality of physical labor (aka, sweating) and heavy machinery.
And on top of that the police in rural areas also enforces alcohol limits these days.
They meant a Feierabendbierchen, which is strictly required for construction workers by some DIN standard, I’m sure
Ah yes the the party end of day cute beer (I think?)
Some German compound nouns are funny.
Nah it’s just a (small) drink (Bierchen) you’re having with coworkers at the end of the working day (Feierabend). Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a party.
At 6:30pm? It’s illegal for construction workers to drink after work?
20 years ago on a trip to Germany, I saw what I was told was a group of construction workers/laborers drinking beers in the morning before work...
I saw that in Rome 13 years ago. Three road workers pulling up some bricks to access a utility. One guy in the hole, two guys outside the hole, one with a tallboy beer, at 930.
I'm sure it comes with a lot of problems but there's something to be said about a relaxed society.
My dad spent a lot of time in Spain back in the day and was a regular at a local cafe, where he'd get a coffee and a tortilla (Spanish omelette) for breakfast. The cafe was popular with construction workers too and they would order the same, only they would top it off with a shot of Carlos Tercero, the cheapest brandy.
That's very unusual for 20 years ago. I remember this from my childhood, 60 years ago, where this was common. But even in the 90s that had stopped almost completely.
I'm guessing you don't know many roofers. I've watched roofers crush tall boys at 6AM more times than I can count.
Roofing's a helluva job. If I was a roofer, you'd damn well believe I'd have a beer+ before work.
People seek pain management where they can get it, and alcohol isn't the worst.
You misspelled meth. Roofers do meth. Outdoor trades do uppers. Indoor trades smoke weed. Everyone smokes cigarettes. Except the electricians, they smoke pole. Everyone knows that.
Lol. I knew a lot of framers who drank (lunch) and smoked (always) pretty heavily.
Maybe we live in different parts of the country but in bavaria it’s completely fine and common to have a beer at lunch, both blue and white collar workers
Oh. I can't decode American 12 hour formats, that shit is too weird and convoluted. I thought you meant at 0630 in the morning which ahsolutely used to be a thing in construction here.
Yea it’s definitely not gone in Bavaria. Plenty of people get a nice beer during lunch, construction workers and bankers alike.
It's a shrinking market, but it surely doesn't help that people are simply boycotting US goods.
For example: Swedish sales for US wine was down around 20% in 2025. The overall decline was about 10%. In a shrinking market, you don't want to also have a shrinking market share.
I'm sure the figures are similar in other countries - and this year it's going to be very different in Canada as well. I imagine Canada was always a big importer of US wine seeing as it's close by and they don't have much domestic production.
Seeing many people comment that they drink less; I'm happy to report I still try to drink as often as I can (Which is still not as often as I want).
Canada actually has quite a lot of domestic production across the country. BC and Ontario are the main producers and have many wineries.
Yes, but many of those wineries import their grapes from California (or other places). My wife and I participate in this boycott and were drinking a sparkling white from Mission Hill Winery which is one of the biggest BC wineries. We noticed the label said something like "Produced in Canada" and then listed grapes imported from California.
Wines that are produced from 100% BC grapes are labelled "BC VQA" and only 19% of the wines in BC are BC VQA.
This was a temporary measure for a couple vintages/years after a frost decimated nearly all the vines in the BC Okanagan. The regulators stepped in to allow relaxed importation rules to help wineries survive. A winery like Mission Hill typically grows and sources all of its grapes within BC.
I think this is temporary and related to crop failures when a lot of BC berries froze. AFAIK they grow their own grapes otherwise. Who knows for how much longer and if the climate will allow growing grapes sustainably at all in those places.
The wine from Canada is not good, unless you like dessert wine/icewine. Maybe there are some exceptions for riesling but it's too cold to grow nice vines there.
You can't be making such blanket statements. There are a lot of great wines. Some of the best syrah I've ever had is from BC, and there are plenty of other great wines.
I had wine from the niagara peninsula - it was either cabernet or a cab/merlot red blend. I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy most dry reds (which is a lot). It wasn't exactly the rival of France's appellations (high bar) but still very good.
Even Ontarians don't speak kindly about wine from Ontario lol
That's because the LCBO has a monopoly on wine sales in Ontario and it's very difficult for Ontario wineries to get their good wines into the LCBO. It's a combination of shelf fees, minimum volume requirements, and an idiosyncratic evaluation system where their participation costs are not covered.
Spend some time at wineries on the Niagara escarpment and you'll find some great wines, especially whites that benefit from the limestone heavy soils. Even the large producers that have a poor public reputation for quality (Trius, Iniskillin, etc.) have much better wines available on site that never make it to the LCBO. For the most part (some exceptions), the people who run these wineries are wine enthusiasts who genuinely care about quality. Prices for that quality are higher than other wine regions with more favorable climates, higher production, and lower labour costs though, that is true.
Depends. Ontario ice wine is great.
because it sucks lol
> but it surely doesn't help that people are simply boycotting US goods.
Seems like that would be such a negligible number that, while it doesn't help, it doesn't hurt either. It's just statistically irrelevant when it comes to a global market like wine.
Exactly. Nobody was buying US wine, even the experienced winos and wine distributors for fancy dining that i've met here in Italy probably have never drunk US wine. Maybe new zeland, australia, south america, but i've never heard of somebody drinking an US wine.
And they weren't boycotting it, it's just not a good enough deal to buy from our prospective, even when people are looking to spend good money, there is better stuff to buy from elsewhere.
More vineyards around the world are being built and the field is getting more crowded amid a shrinking market.
I think that trying to explain the reduced sales of California grape growers in terms of an international boycott of US products seems like highly motivated reasoning, not factual reasoning.
US exports have been growing every year since the pandemic low of 2020
US Exports (in billions of $)
We obviously do not have full data for 2026, but the first half is higher than the same time in 2025. But this is really driven by economic activity, so if there is a global recession, you can expect fewer people to buy US goods, just as you can expect Americans to buy fewer foreign goods. The 2020 low was not because of a boycott, but a general economic decline, and as far as I am aware, no boycott of US goods has ever been detected in the trade data, it's always been a media affair or hyperlocalized (e.g. some people boycotting Apple or Windows or Google seem to be the most common media stories).And I think this is a pretty general situation, e.g. consumer boycotts rarely show up in trade data - to hit trade data you need government sanctions, nothing else moves the needle.
When looking at the actual wine export-volume as factual reasoning [0], it draws a different picture and shows a drop of almost 50% from 2020 to 2025.
Export volume (millions of gallons):
Noted elsewhere, Canada accounts for more than a third of US wine exports [1], so the trade-war with Canada in 2026 surely wasn't helpful either to keep export-volume at 2025-levels...[0] Association of California wineries: https://wineinstitute.org/our-industry/statistics/us-wine-ex...
[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-08-26/california...
In a story explaining California wine growers pain, be aware that 98% of California wine is consumed in the US. Exports are negligible.
This is like when a story about housing costs was posted and the Canadians chimed in that the US housing woes are due to not having access to Canadian lumber, and the board had to explain to him that that 80% of lumber used in US production is sourced domestically.
The story is way more complicated and hides where the pain points are.
The real average is closer to 25% of lumber coming from Canada but if you look at specific types like SPF which is important for framing, it’s almost evenly split between US domestic and Canada-sourced. Douglas Fir is heavily sourced from Canada. But some lumber like SYP is almost all US domestic.
And in terms of particular states, tariffing Canada sourced lumber has outsized impact because Canadian lumber has a freight advantage so getting US sourced lumber is going to drive up prices even if Canadian is avoided.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the wine story was equally complicated.
I don't find your general data on US exports very convincing for this case.
Is there any way to separate US exports of consumer products (which would be affected by consumer boycotts) vs. US exports for industrial products or capital goods (which I wouldn't expect to be affected by these boycotts)?
It is entirely possible that specific consumer-focused industries (wine, tourism, etc.) are being strongly affected by international boycotts and having decreasing exports, even while industry/capital-focused exports (petroleum, plastics, weapons, medical equipment, telecom equipment, data centre electronics, etc.) are increasing at a faster rate which would hide the consumer boycott effect in total export $.
Apart from the inflation mentioned above, there are a multitude of factors at play that cannot be determined by just looking at aggregated numbers. The price of some goods, for example, has skyrocketed due to general scarcity (electronics, oil...). Fx got worse for the dollar vs other currencies. And are numbers only for goods, or do they include services?
It is definitely a reality that certain goods have seen localized boycotts, like alcohol in Canada, and some services have had to change (data sovereignty in Europe got a lot of traction).
I think comparing by tonnage would be more apt than comparing dollar figures which are subject to a lot of external factors, including currency exchange rates and inflation.
No one measures exports by "tonnage".
Also, the idea that California wine - of all products - is very sensitive to exports is a bit strange since although California wine sales account for more revenue than the entire wine industry of any other country -- 68 billion dollars worth of sales each year (https://wineinstitute.org/our-industry/statistics/california...), the state exports relatively little, only about a billion dollars of California wine is sold abroad. So 98% of California wine is sold within the US. Only 2% is exported.
And yet there are so many people on this board that are convinced that Europe, of all places, is somehow responsible for driving California wine grower sales woes.
It's pretty funny if you think about it, you have some Bosnian dude and when you tell him that Ford is facing a sales slump he immediately shoots back -- it's because the Bosnians are no longer buying Fords! Truly an amazing example of economic narcissism.
You're misreading the data you shared
> "68 billion dollars worth of sales each year"
TOTAL Retail value (includes markups by wholesalers, retailers and restaurateurs), NOT Sales Revenue.
> "only about a billion dollars of California wine is sold abroad"
That's Sales revenue [1]
> "So 98% of California wine is sold within the US. Only 2% is exported."
The data is right on the page you shared.
So the export volume in 2024 appears to be >12%, not 2%There's no data for 2025, but wine exports fell by ~20% in 2025 [1], if TOTAL wine shipments fell equally this is quite a strong dent in volumes already in 2025. So 2026 doesn't look rosy to begin with before any trade-war being added...
> "It's pretty funny if you think about it, you have some Bosnian dude [..]"
Let's not do that please.
[0] https://wineinstitute.org/our-industry/statistics/california...
[1] https://wineinstitute.org/our-industry/statistics/us-wine-ex...
Look at the last column:
Total value of $67.5 Billion
California's exports of wine is about a billion (https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2024-2025_california...)
So by my thinking, one billion is not 12% of 67 Billion. Indeed, it is less than 2%.
> Let's not do that please.
I agree that we shouldn't do it, or rather that commentators shouldn't do it, but I don't agree that we shouln't talk about commentators doing this.
You literally have this situation. Only 2% of California wine goes to the export market at all, and people are literally arguing that their personal boycott of some nation that doesn't even account for a billion in sales is driving California wine export woes. It is a bizarre form of economic narcissism and my example was apt.
> "Total value of $67.5 Billion"
Look at what you're replying to.
As already stated, this is the ESTIMATED RETAIL VALUE of the wine, NOT the Sales Revenue.
You then conflate this with the EXPORT VALUE of Californian wine, which is not the retail value but the price the winery is selling the wine for to a foreign buyer.
Apart from that the value also doesn't matter, in the context of AMOUNT of grapes purchased the QUANTITY of wine produced is more relevant than the VALUE created with it.
> "You literally have this situation. Only 2% of California wine goes to the export market at all, and people are literally arguing that [..]"
Again, it's not 2%. You literally need to read the sources you cited yourself. They provide good data to educate yourself and see where you're trying to force a conclusion without the proper facts.
And nobody is "arguing" what you state. The OP stated "It's a shrinking market, but it surely doesn't help that people are simply boycotting US goods." and you're trying to ridicule him for that without having any leg to stand on...
the op was from sweden, not bosnia though; and surely if there's no impact of the trade war and tariffs why to put them up in the first place?
This is an incredibly disingenuous and specious argument.
The discussion is about US wine production and consumption. You present the aggregate total vale of all US exports in US dollars to 6 significant digits. Does the variance of the volume of wine exports in litres even show up in those 6 signifcant digits?
Consider: (1) is six significant digits of precision justified, or is it insignificant accurancy? (2) Do those aggregate numbers take into account inflation? (3) Do those aggregate numbers take into account the (not insignificant) devaluation of the US dollar? (4) Do those aggregate numbers include both goods and services?
No, if you were to make an honest argument by quoting US exports, you need to limit it to the volume of US wine exports in litres. Misdirection can be a great tool of propaganda but is not a useful contribution to interesting intellectual discourse.
I responded to the claim that this was due to a boycott of US goods writ large, not a specific boycott about wine.
What would be the reason to boycott wine only and not other US goods? What about the US wine industry is controversial that does not apply to the other industries?
So I wrote that there is no evidence of boycotts showing up in trade data, which is true.
Then, after doing some digging, so I pointed out that almost none of California wines are exported anyway. So obviously this cannot be the result of foreign boycotts.
So let's get back to the "incredibly disingenuous and specious argument", and start with the dictionary definition of those and go from there, because that accurately describes how I view your response.
> I responded to the claim that this was due to a boycott of US goods writ large, not a specific boycott about wine.
While boycotting iPhones might be difficult, taking the Cabernet one shelf over takes almost no effort or negative impact to the consumer. It's rarely more expensive to switch from a US wine e.g. French or Australian. It's sold in the same store.
For the specific example of Sweden, every single wine bottle in every store is sorted by country in the store. And it sits above a price sticker with the flag of the origin country on it.
That's wildly different from similar choices e.g. when you pick a can of Hellman's Mayonnaise, there's no US flag under it. But for wine in particular, the country of origin is almost always known to the buyer and involved in the process, even if Sweden stands out as an extreme due to the flag being under the bottle.
That's why I believe the boycott which isn't a boycott on US wine but on US products in general, is _most notable_ for wine or in some other case not notable at all because it's a small effect and consumers don't always know what is American and what isn't (Hellman's example). But for wine, everyone knows.
The difference between the general slump in wine sales (10%) and the decline in US sales (20%) could have more factors, such as price. But it's easy to assume - and polls suggest - that consumers really do avoid the US wine.
> seems like highly motivated reasoning, not factual reasoning
Drawing conclusions by presenting total US exports doesn't seem like factual reasoning. Most exports are of non-consumer products, which aren't as influenced by boycotts. A true analysis would take into consideration items that consumers can chose to boycott.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports/beverages...
That looks like inflation.
Are those inflation adjusted numbers? Inflation tends to hide all kinds of problems, which is why politicians love it.
Long time casual wine drinker (and occasional beer), I find myself drinking less and less. Two reasons: first drinking a glass of average wine for the sake of having a drink makes no sense anymore. I prefer to have a drink more seldom but pick a better wine, that I actually enjoy. Second, as I get older I see that even a modest amount of alcohol has negative effect on me: during the day I get groggy, during the night my sleep is worse (I know, counterfactual, but so it is).
It's long known that drinking alcohol disturbs your sleep. You're getting slumbery and probably will fall asleep easily but the sleep will not be as wholesome.
My sleep tracker registers terrible deep sleep and sometimes I jolk awake after the buzz wears off.
Could also be rapid change in blood sugar waking you up as well. Happens to me too and then im wide awake for 2-3 hours.
Same here. Perhaps this is something that doesn't happen to people with a robust tolerance, but I'll never test that theory. Maybe before cell phones and Netflix, people just slept a lot more to compensate.
Get yourself checked for sleep apnea.
I think different types of alcohol have quite a different effect on me now (40yo) - wine will get me mellow and sleepy, beer would get me to be more social, whiskey will make me more energetic / risk taking.
Knowing that I can tune my level of enjoyment of whatever is happening.
Though there is an old saying from where I grew up - alcohol is stealing happiness from tomorrow to have it today.
And that has always stuck with me - whenever I drink I get a bit happier that instant and feel worse more tired the next day.
And that is ok if I am going to a social event and I want to get the most out of it, and I know next day will be chill anyway - who’ll can make the “chill” time even more chill.
You're just describing normal aging though. People have been experiencing this (particularly #2) since time immemorial. The question is why young people are not arriving to fill the void left by you (and me), as they always have. I agree with other posters, it's some combination of economics, weed, and culture.
I take your list of reasons and add empty calories to it. I’m training and want muscle mass, not a beer belly so no alcohol for me.
Interestingly this was basically what started it for me. Empty calories and research showing it literally inhibits muscle gain irregardless of the caloric effect since your body basically switches to "get this shit the fuck out" before continuing to be normal.
Secondary benefit for me was all the other stuff. Now I find that the once or twice in the entire year where I might have one drink it only takes like one drink to already feel it.
The impact on our sleep is one of the main reasons our having a beer or glass of wine with dinner trailed off. Sometimes now we go months in between any sort of alcohol.
> during the day I get groggy, during the night my sleep is worse (I know, counterfactual, but so it is)
Have you tried lighter wines or prosecco? I've had some summer wine from a grape variety called Inzolia in Sicily. Quite light on alcohol, tasted a bit like lime water.
https://www.wine-searcher.com/grape-715-inzolia
My experience is that grogginess really depends on the wine that you drink, but it always ruins my sleep if I exceed two glasses (150 ml). For instance I would almost never drink high alcohol (>13.5%) or high sugar content Rieslings. They almost always give me headaches.
se here. i enjoy beer but annoyes me that they all have the same 5% alcohol content. its too much, I just like the taste, I don't want to be sleepy. non alcoholic beers taste terrible
> non alcoholic beers taste terrible
Fortunately, this is not universally true anymore.
There are now beers brewed with extremely low-alc yeasts (which have a trait that makes them unable to digest maltose) that make <0,5% alc beers with good flavours. This combined with sour malts and good hops can give you great flavours. These low-alc yeasts remove the need to maltreat the beer for removing the alc. And it is often OK to have 0,5% alc -- maybe not during pregnancy, but to avoid the annoying 5% alc. It's most probably not the industry cheap shit though.
There's also the possibility to just stop the fermentation with normal yeasts at any point, e.g., at 1% alc. I've had a couple of very good beers like this, too.
There is a new method for 0,0% beer. I sometimes drink a 0,0 mixed with lemonade (called Radler in germany) after sport. There is also Fassbrause which is not a beer at all (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fassbrause ) but tastes a bit malty
What's the point of NA Radler when regular Radler is already in the 1-2% range?
The ones in Japan are fantastic. I'm addicted to them. The Asahi 0% alc, 0% calorie beer is 70% as good as their regular beer in my opinion. Unfortunately it's around the same price.
Disclaimer: I lost my sense of smell due to a head injury, so that does muddle my ability to taste things. But I think with beer a sense of smell is less important
We have some legitimately excellent options here in the Australian market. The Heaps Normal XPA is definitely worth a crack.
I swapped my daily beer for Heaps Normal XPA, which I felt was about 80% as good as regular beer. Then after a few months of that I realised I no-longer craved a beer, so swapped to sparkling water.
Now I only drink maybe once a month. It's great. Happy I kicked the mild habit.
> non alcoholic beers taste terrible
Might be a market issue. I grew up along beer drinkers and over the past few years, so many good alcohol free beers have entered the German market, that a lot of them shifted almost fully to alcohol free beers.
Got any recommendations for good German ones? The market in the UK has been improving a lot but I do still think a lot of them taste like socks, I'd be interested in trying some more high-quality German options if I can find them over here (Aldi/Lidl probably my best bet).
I like Störtebeker Atlantic Ale, IPA style beer. Very drinkable. Available in most super markets and Späti's (late night shops). Here in Berlin there's also the Brlo Nakid which is similar in taste.
If you want a pils style beer, Jever Fun is pretty hoppy. Krombacher has a decent 0.0 beer as well. A bit on the sweet side for me but I have that sometimes. I also recall seeing a beer that was labelled as Feinherb at some point that was pretty tasty. The exact name escapes me.
Several of the Bavarian beer hall style helles beers now also come in alcohol free versions. Very drinkable. They taste very similar. Bayreuther is one that you might find in some shops.
Many of the Hefeweizen varieties also exist in alcohol free versions and are pretty drinkable. Most places will have that available.
Not German but some bars now have Guinness 0.0 in cans. Haven't seen that in the supermarket but it's a near drop in replacement for normal Guinness as far as I'm concerned and I tend to order that when I see it available.
I stopped drinking alcohol a few years ago but I still enjoy going out with friends who do drink. Mostly people barely notice what other people drink. And the lack of a hangover after a good night sleep is a nice bonus. Although you can overdo it. I always joke about all of the downsides of drinking beers without any of the upsides.
As mentioned in another comment Störtebeker Atlantik Ale is great and available in a alcohol free version.
I'd also like to add Weihenstephaner Hefeweißbier Alkoholfrei is fantastic: https://www.weihenstephaner.de/en/our-beers/non-alcoholic-wh...
From what I understand Weihenstephaner developed a unique brewing process which results in a great tasting 0% beer with only 15 calories per 100 ml.
I also like their Helles Alkoholfrei: https://www.weihenstephaner.de/en/our-beers/non-alcoholic-or...
Erdinger Alcoholfrei was a low alcohol German "health drink" before it was popular - has been around for about 25 years. It's fairly available in the UK.
This is the best one out of all mentioned in this thread by far
I am not sure about international availability, so your best bet are probably very large breweries.
If you like pilsner, I do enjoy an occasional Kulmbacher Edelherb.
The Augustiner Helles Alkoholfrei is incredibly popular, but hard to come by even here in Bavaria.
Similarly popular and among my favorites is the Bayreuther Hell Alkoholfrei.
That being said, neither of these options is available at Lidl or Aldi in Germany, so I would assume they aren‘t internationally either.
I like "light" Warsteiner 2,5% on a hot day.
I don’t know where you live but here in the UK and in Europe you can find all sorts of beer from 0 to 5% (and more of course), even in local supermarkets or draft in a pub. And yeah the 0% taste bad, but a 0.5 to 3% can be great, I’m sure you could find some online if you’re willing to, search for “table beer”, “small beer” or just low alcohol beer.
And in terms of non alcoholic beer, “lucky saint” tastes great (0.5%) and is very popular in the UK, lots of pub have it on tap.
In the UK it's common to have 3.4% beer/ale (for ABV >= 3.5% the duty is higher) but there are little options between 3.4% and <=0.5% (alcohol free). I find 3.4% to be a good trade-off between the taste and the alcohol content. I do drink Lucky Saint occasionally but find it less pleasant than various 3.4% ales.
So how come there are so many rowdy drunks inside and outside pubs in London? Perhaps they are just drinking more of that 3.4%.
I like the taste of Heineken 0:0. Not the same but pleasant regardless.
Meanwhile, in the States I see more and more 8/9/10% IPAs from major brewers.
My local Morrisons has a few decent 3.4% ales for £1-£1.25, I am a loyal customer.
I'm not a fan of Morrisons, but they do have a great range of booze.
One of the things I miss the most (on a daily basis the most) about the UK is the beer. What you're suggesting just doesn't exist in the USA. Really and truly doesn't.
(Though, as others in this thread point out, NA beers are more common, and better, than they used to be. They're not the same thing, though.)
i am in Paris, and I don't see much variety. Obviously there is so much more choice in big hypermarkets, but I don't go there daily, unlike my local, 30sqm store next my apartment
The French beer scene has improved over the last 10 years but yeah, it's still quite limited in terms of selection. When I was first visiting there really wasn't much at all outside of Belgian beers, though I've since had a few very good beers from Paris and other parts of the north of the country. Usually only finding them in larger markets, though, as you say.
The UK's beer scene is wildly different to the rest of Europe, and not something that we've managed to export very well. Hell, we could even export cask ale (rare outside of the UK) to Paris without it spoiling these days, yet nobody really does. Whether it's due to taste or the awkwardness of casks I don't know, but I do think it would meet with success in Paris if someone did it properly. Not all beer has to be refrigerated and fizzy. We have so many varieties that you just don't get with fizzy keg beer, and much of it notably weaker in alcohol content. Some examples:
Mild at ~2.5% (made from reusing the materials used to make Bitter), Session at ~3.5%, Bitter at ~4%, Best Bitter at ~5% etc. IPAs are the hot thing even over here now but we get notably more variations in those than most places too.
I'd be curious to know from anyone in Germany if they have equivalents to these sorts of categories, as what we get from Germany over here tends to all be about the same strength.
Due to ADHD meds I do now have to drink less, and the best non-alcoholic beer I've found so far is Guinness 0%. I'm not a massive Guinness drinker, it's alright but there are other stouts I prefer, but the 0% version is surprisingly close to "real" Guinness and has none of those sock-y flavours that most non-alcoholic beer has.
It is indeed a completely different scene, which is genuinely interested in variety.
It's a bit of a cliche but you really can split Europe into "beer country/wine country/spirits country". France, Italy, Spain and Germany west of the Rhine are wine country. Munich is clearly beer country. And Germany has focused on perfecting a very narrow set of light beers, if you want diversity of taste that's all in the wines. Similarly you're not going to get Parisians interested in beer diversity when they have French wine to argue about.
(It is possible that climate change will shift this; England is starting to produce a few pretty good wines)
Guinness 0% is fantastic. Unlike a lot of brewers the Guinness company were very keen to retain their standards rather than slop out an inferior product to tick a box.
If it is 30sqm local store, then get to know the owner and ask them to stock it for you.
get a "Stella 0.0" and tell me it tastes terrible.
Stella - the Belgian equivalent to Budweiser.
In Belgium, Stella is fully accepted, contrary to fe "Cristal" or "Maes". Of course, it's no "Jupiler".
lol that stuff is absolutely awful
It is. Actually the best candidates for 0% seems to be the IPA beers as the bitterness adds this little "punch" classic zero alcohol beers seems to suffer from.
The US market is having a boom of craft NA beers and many are really good. Athletic, Go Brewing, and Sober Carpenter are my main go tos. Guinness 0.0 scratches an itch, but I find it a little sweet. The NA Corona with a lime slice is almost indistinguishable from the original. Strangely I find the Stella NA very good (I don't normally drink the regular Stella).
If you like sour beers my experience is they are nearly identical to their native counterparts.
I generally find the breweries that focus completely on NA beer better than existing players who are adding NA to their line up.
In the twin cities, one big brewery, Bauhaus, went out of business briefly and got bought and reopened by ABV, a company that specializes in NA, alcohol-adjusted, and THC beverages, https://www.bauhausbrewlabs.com/blog/Blog%20Post%20Title%20O... . Now you can get beer in full strength, session, NA, and THC. It seems like a sign of the times, but I'm happy to have more choices and as I get older I don't feel like drinking the strong IPAs like I used to.
In the US market, at least, the quality has improved dramatically over the past few years. Several established breweries now produce alcohol-removed versions of existing beers, with varying degrees of success - but in general my experience is that alcohol-free dark beers work better, the increased maltiness does a better job of hiding what's missing. IPAs and lagers can end up tasting somewhat thin compared to the normal version.
There's a few things I miss about the UK, and one of them is easy availability of beer that's less than 5%. Unfortunately that seems to have been creeping upwards - the shift to craft keg (rather than cask) beer seems to have been accompanied by moving more in the direction of US-style stronger beers. Several breweries do still produce milds that are in the <3% range, but it's increasingly hard to find them, even in pubs that used to be reliable suppliers. It's interesting how cultural this is.
Real ale has plenty of lower alcohol percentage options:
My faves are Harvest Pale 3.8% and Our House 3.4%
I also like mild which is often <=3%
0% Guinness is the only beer I would say that matches the taste of alcohol based beer. The others can be ok, but taste too malty, the flavour is off somehow. Also having 2 or more none alcohol beers seems to also make me feel "hungover" in a way, maybe due to additives.
It might be worth it to check out what the market offers. Here in Germany lots of well known brands have started to cater to the non-alc consumers for the last few years. I like eg. Andechser Hell alkoholfrei. The increased competition resulted in some good nonalc beers from reputable wellknown brands
Corona zero and Guinness Zero aren't that bad. A Guinness Zero on draft is pretty much the same taste as the regular stuff.
Wow, didnt know Guinness Zero existed. Now that stuff might actually be good 4 you :D
Guiness Zero is my go to for a sipping beer when I'm actually in a pub. I like a pine needles and lemon IPA when it's very cold but they get a bit much when you're having a few over a long evening.
> non alcoholic beers taste terrible
That's a rather broad claim. There is so many different variations non alcoholic beer nowadays.
It used to be true for all non-alcoholic beers in Sweden but it is not true anymore, do it is very possible that all non-alcoholic beers are actually bad where they live. Or they just base their comment on old data.
Others have me ruined that NA beers are pretty decent these days. But I've also taken to literally watering down my beer. I'll pour half a can and fill the other half of the glass with water and ice. Then later do the same with the other half. Still tastes decent, but really cuts down on the alcohol.
The non-alcoholic beers have improved a lot in recent years. Even the non-alcoholic Guiness tastes pretty close to normal Guiness.
I think the trend has been a small (and making shrinking) contingent of alcoholics/"beer enthusiests" that are the backbone of the beer industry, and they always lean towards favoring higher alchohol
I’ve recently been in Spain and the non-alcoholic beer was great. To be fair I can’t remember the last time I’ve had alcoholic beer because of the same reasons many people mentioned already, so maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to it.
My local supermarket sells 3.4% ales for £1 each, it's fantastic.
Can recommend: Mash Gang, We Can Be Friends, Erdinger 0% and I actually quite enjoy Peroni 0% on a summer day. I’m also told that Guinness 0% is pretty good - but I’m not a big Guinness drinker.
>I’m also told that Guinness 0% is pretty good
I could probably tell it apart from normal Guinness in a blind taste test. But it is pretty good.
There are some excellent non-alcoholic ones, but also some terrible ones. Maybe see if you can find a few different brands
Get into radlers and shandys! Even do for yourself at home, go 50/50 beer and lemonade. Very refreshing.
I've started drinking malt beer. I think it's basically pre-ferment beer, so it's non alcoholic and a bit sweet. I like to mix it with Sprite Zero, something like 3 parts malt beer to 2 parts sprite. It's also good on its own.
It's delicious and alcohol free, it does have a lot of calories but mixing it with calorie free soda gets you a bit more bang for your calorie buck so to speak.
NA guinness tastes the same
coors light
It’s weed. A whole cohort of people and kids are no longer drinking alcohol (like they did) or never really started because THC and/or CBD is now legal in vapes, gummies, drinks.
I visited Charleston and was surprised they’ve only legalized THC insofar as THC drinks are available at bars. But a lot of the young people were drinking cans of it instead of spiked seltzer, which was the only alcohol anyone was holding. No beer, no wine.
Similarly: they all were smoking computers—not a single analog cigarette in sight. Tobacco farmers in shambles?
Tobacco has never been more lucrative. Between Zyn and vapes, they’re swimming in cash
> Zyn and vapes
Those don't contain tobacco, nor nicotine derived from tobacco. I'd be surprised if tobacco farming was still lucrative, except maybe the fine stuff for cigars, but that was always a relatively small market compared to cheap cig tobacco.
TIL, I thought Tobacco was used as the source for nicotine. Is it all synthetic these days?
Agreed. Synthetic nicotine has been around for awhile as well, which is much cheaper than sourcing the old fashioned way.
It's also the economy. Everything is expensive. Young people are less successful than ever before (at no fault of their own). When it costs $10 a beer with tax and tip, most young people simply can't afford to do that with any regularity.
It's also also competition. In 1970, your option was to stay home and watch one of three TV channels and that's it. Now, your options are literally to watch any movie ever made, watch any TV show ever made, or play any game ever made... all connected with your friends online.
It is a part of it, but it's not just weed. I would argue the economy is the most impactful factor here.
I eagerly await the return of "Two Buck Chuck" (750 ml for $2) at Trader Joe's:
https://www.tastingtable.com/1112155/trader-joes-two-buck-ch...
European wine merchants periodically produce gluts of wine. Supposedly it was so bad wine batches were thrown away or poured into drains (doubtless a wondrous occurrence for the drunks passed-out there!)
https://worldoffinewine.com/news-features/wine-glut-history
They can heat the grapes and sell the juice, it's fantastic - I just got a 3 l canister of fresh grape juice to drink on the weekend (since it's harvest time for vineyards, fresh from its producer, no additives, no preservatives, not even filtered). The taste is unlike anything from this world - I'd compare it to liquid honey, which only goes to show what industrally processed stuff the shops are feeding us with.
Aren't grapes for wine different from those for eating? Probably tastes bad if you eat it directly?
You're right that some are way too acidic and astringent. Usually the kind that you'd age for longer and have more complexity would make poor juice but excellent wines.
There are plenty of varieties of grapes that do well as juice and wine. It's just the type of wine that you'd age very little because it would lose the acidity and temperament too quickly if aged.
Nah, they still taste like grape and sugary. It wouldn’t ferment without sugar after all.
Nah. They're smaller, usually sweeter and have big seeds. I actually prefer the taste of wine grapes, even though they're harder to eat. Just has a few over the weekend. Also the wines that retain the seed or grape skin aroma taste great.
Anyway, wine is about at least 3x more expensive than grape juice so it's better ROI to sell good wine. They could make alcohol free wines, but in my experience everything I've tried sucks, just like alcohol free beer.
I have never had grapes that tasted better than wine grapes in Georgia (the country). Like a juicy caramel.
Aren't Georgian wine grapes very different from Californian? I love Georgian wine, but some of my friends in the US shudder after trying it.
yes different, but as with any fruit there is variety. muscadine grapes are huge and taste like candy
Technically yes, but it would be unprofitable to pivot. (Presumably whoever you bought your juice from was planning to make juice, and budgeted accordingly.)
I'm Gen X. I lived my best life in the 80s and 90s, socializing, partying (frat boy years included), with alcohol as the main social lubricant. After Covid, almost everyone in my circle stopped or cut back on going out to bars and drinking, me included. It wasn't the price of drinks. Something about the lockdowns simply rewired the social norms (and our brains).
I feel for the farmers. I still miss a nicely chilled Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc now and then.
Millennial here, and it was the same for me.
The thing is, over lockdown I stopped drinking socially. And then I realized I didn’t miss the feeling of intoxication. And then I realized my sleep got a whole lot better.
And then lockdown loosened, so some friends and I went out for drinks for old times’ sake, and I felt awful, both that evening and the next morning. My tolerance for alcohol is just gone, and I don’t have any particular desire to get it back.
I had the same realisation but before COVID. I had a friend who didn't drink, but he was always the most fun person to be around. I realised you didn't need alcohol, or any drugs, to have a good time. Without alcohol I was funnier, had more and better sex, slept better, and had no hangover the next day. I never looked back really.
Nowadays I'm older and not looking for sex so don't take part in that scene. I would say a few years ago when I would go out there was still some peer pressure to drink and I was considered odd going for non-alcoholic options. But nowadays it's not weird at all and the alcohol-free options are much more numerous and varied. Lime and soda was my go to for years but now I'll partake of an alcohol-free beer or cider.
I found the opposite effect from covid personally as a 'zillennial'. As soon as the lockdowns and 'rule of six' were over the first thing me and my friends did was rent a nice house in the middle of the Welsh countryside and have a massive multi-day party. We all felt that lockdowns had stolen what was left of our early 20s from us and wanted to make up for it!
I often wonder if there's a lot of national differences here, in the UK people for the most part wanted to reverse everything about the covid norms as quickly as possible after Partygate and all the political drama. People are still drinking less but it's because pints cost >£6 now in a lot of places, nothing to do with an outbreak of temperance.
> People are still drinking less but it's because pints cost >£6 now in a lot of places, nothing to do with an outbreak of temperance.
Yep, same over here in central europe/balkans.
Covid came, bars were closed, bars reopened with limited seating, prices went up, tourism restarted, our city center became a tourist trap, prices went up, and higher prices then radiated outside the tourist traps, and well... it doesn't add up anymore.
Sure, college students and highschoolers can buy cheap wine or booze and drink in parks, even in below freezing weather, but sitting in a bar has become very expensive.
As a fellow Gen Xer I identify with this. More and more of my friends drink less and less and when they do they prefer a cocktail instead. I think wine has lost the appeal it used to have in the early 2000s. The cost of a glass of wine in the restaurant doesn't help either. As an ex-avid wine drinker, I would be hard pressed to spend more than $30 of a bottle because of the diminishing difference in incremental quality after that price point.
I just drink at home now. It's cheaper and I can find different beers I want to taste rather than the meager selection available at a pub.
They might want to consider also making Federweißer. It has less alcohol, is carbonated, sweeter, and fresher. I generally really like it even though I'm not the biggest wine fan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federweisser
In Austria we call it Sturm. Especially this time of year people love to drink it, but drinking it in large quantities will cause unwanted bowel movements.
And quiche! Or elsässer flammkuchen!
https://www.einfachbacken.de/rezepte/flammkuchen-rezept-einf...
+
https://www.amazon.de/Federwei%C3%9Fer-selber-machen-einfach...
For some reason California wines are significantly more expensive than French (Bordeaux and Bourgogne regions I'm mostly interested in) and Spanish (Rioja) wines that are arguably more reputed, older and more experienced wineries, and I'd argue higher quality.
Yet California wines are VERY expensive. My uninformed hypothesis - French and Spanish winemakers make good wines with cost efficiency, whereas America's wine makers don't. So all things being equal, input costs are higher. I see the same with cider - compare Spanish cider to New York cider, the latter being 50 percent more expensive.
Could anyone corroborate or refute this?
I am not sure where you live but Bordeaux and Bourgogne are regularly the most expensive wines where I live, NYC. With that being said, I can find just about any wine at any price point. Also, pinot's from Oregon are generally half the price and as good as a lot of Bourgogne I've had. Similarly, I've had a lot of great Chardonnays from Cali at a more affordable price point than their Bourgogne counter parts. With that being said, when I go to France, a lot of these French wines end up being half the price or less so it really depends on where you're looking.
Our local wine shop in Burlingame, CA has a very knowledgeable 65 yr old proprietor (30 yrs running this store) who told me that Napa wines are definitely overpriced by 3x.
Because I'm not as particular about region he regularly introduces me to wines from other parts of the world that taste great at a much lower cost.
Same - the local wine shop has yet to fail me when I ask for a recommendation. Given them a price range and either taste preferences or meal pairing, and they have always sent me home with something I enjoyed.
Wine in North America is largely a gate kept rich person thing. It is usually not mass production wine, but what little amount of grapes grow go into weird wine makes that they then mark up as if it is nectar from god.
But that said, there is dirt cheap California wine brands, like barefoot.
Does Barefoot make anything decent? My experience with them has been mostly cloyingly sweet whites that really weren't drinkable. Gag.
In Portugal, you can get a good wine for 5 euros, but we are not great at marketing ourselves.
Portuguese wine and also olive oil are super high quality. In my country price wise it's on par with Italy/Spain/France. But make no mistake it's also on par quality wise.
Some of the olive oils have their own unique profiles and i also really like the lighter wines from portugal.
I also agree with this perspective from the UK.
One reason might be the strengthening dollar since the financial crisis.
(From 1 GBP being 2 USD in 2007, to 1.3 now. Likewise EUR was 1.6 in 2007, but 1.13 now).
That's potentially quite a big difference buying American goods vs European.
I had a great English red at a winery, I don't remember what it was unfortunately, and I was shocked when they told me the price of the bottle. It was 35 pounds a decade ago. I think it must be due to input and manufacturing cost efficiency that English and American wines that are equivalent are so much pricier than established old world wines.
My understanding from wine people is that European vineyards tend to be really old with the owners owning the land outright. Californian vineyards tend to be younger with the owners still paying off debt used to purchase the land. This just adds a large overhead cost to US wines.
That said, there are oodles of wines from the new and old world at every price point. If you want to spend $500 a bottle to get something from France, Spain, or California you can. If you want to spend $13 a bottle to get something pretty decent from France, Spain, or California you can.
I don't think this is the generational reasons this article is making it out to be.
We would drink our share of Californian wines, but after the trump trade war, war on Iran, and everything he's done to destabilize the global economy... We decided to stop buying anything American.
Wine was an easy switch.
Alcohol consumption was already in decline before the massive increase in GLP-1 drug use. As someone who used Mounjaro, I think that's only the tip of the iceberg.
When on these drugs, you simply have no desire for such things, and I'm a beer and wine lover. Now that I've stopped, I'm slowly drinking again, but I feel my taste has changed.
I don't know if it was the drugs or the time that passed, but I simply can't drink or have the same desire as before (it could be my age, too, lol).
My experience as well. GLP-1 removed the spark that alcohol has always given off when it hit my bloodstream. As a lifelong over-drinker, it was incredible to have a few sips of a martini and basically think 'meh, whatever'.
Not true at all.
Which part is not true?
> while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns
My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life, and drinking remains a social habit for the most part at a younger age. While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
It's a nice claim to say they are more responsible, but it tells an incomplete story.
I don't think the science is settled, but the idea that there's a lot more to do at home to stay occupied and entertained rather than going outside is factually true.
When I was growing up, there were only a handful of channels and then cable. Compared to what we have now, that was the Dark Ages. There's so much you can do on a screen now that's compelling.
Infinite scrolling on Shorts, YouTube, video games, social media, hanging out with people online, chatrooms—combine that with Uber Eats, and you can do whatever you want.
The one thing that will make you want to go out is, of course, meeting someone to have sex with, but that's become weaponized, especially for young adults.
Boys being called creepy and predatory for making the wrong move was always an issue, but now you can be shamed online with a video as proof. Why take the risk when you can meet somebody online?
One big problem is a camera in everyone’s pocket together with a culture of posting everything online.
In an environment like that getting drunk just isn’t very good for your life/career. Even something as small as going to the dance floor when you are not really good at it takes a lot more from you when there is 5 cameras recording you the moment you look stupid/funny dancing.
There are chatrooms again?
They moved to places like WhatsApp and Discord I believe.
Yes, they are on Discord.
Ah OK.
My pet theory is that this is also the reason for the plunge in murder rates.
If there is a creepy video as a result, the "move" was likely creepy.
The move is only creepy if the interest is one way.
This is why the memes of some guy talking to a coworker is considered sexual assault, where if Tom Brady does it, it’s considered cute flirtation
Actually, most women don't like being assaulted, regardless of the attractiveness of the assaulter. Additionally, this is true of humans generally, not just women.
It's really gross that you think of women as so alien and inhuman.
Except you made that up.
It's a common meme. You can disagree with the validity of the meme but not with the existence of it.
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1663497-hello-human-resource...
The above statement can be read as disagreeing with the validity of the statement. IDK why OP would try to refute a meme's existence and not the sentence the meme semes to be supporting. Why did you believe that was their intent?
If you like reading sci-fi, I’d really recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) to get some perspective on the extreme of a life where everything you do is potentially visible to any and everyone around you.
The reality is that most awkwardness comes across as creepy. Lots of people are awkward, especially young people. They shouldn’t be shamed for it.
what i've derived from my north american anecdata is that any kind of flirtation or even just talking to a stranger about a neutral topic is increasingly automatically graded as creepy. I'd say the social fabric has simply degraded to the point that people have forgotten how to talk to one another, social atrophy i guess. In my northern europe experience women deflect attention with much less fearfulness, and I'd say people just have much higher trust towards one another.
I'm too old, and my kids too young, so the current landscape is foreign to me.
As an outside observer, could it be that manosphere influence has an undue effect on young mens behavior, which (if true) would indeed be creepy for a lot of (most?) women, regardless if the execution is awkward or not.
I was certainly awkward in my teens/young adulthood, but in my singular experience, the maturity and confidence didn't come from acting cocky or showing off, but just treating anyone I had an interest in as a person first and foremost, and being comfortable and even open about my awkwardness and shortcomings.
That did wonders. Also accepting that a rejection doesn't mean a personal slight to you, nor a failure in appreciation of you from her, but merely a lack of mutual interest, which is also fine.
Selective editing can achieve very impressive effects, add some lying to it and you can have utterly misleading video with very limited effort.
My observation is that the young people who do drink aren't going for beers and wines, which are tastes that can take time to acquire, they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
Getting Gen-z to even get close enough to the glass to smell a nice red is a challenge. And when they do, they seem to recoil rapidly.
Anecdata only.
roy lee, the founder of cluely got lost his spot in harvard because he was caught "sneaking out" of a high school field trip
if you played hooky on a high school field trip in 80s or 90s you would probably not lose your college admission to harvard
this police state attitude completely sterilizes young people socially, their parents regulate behaviour and monitor people with airtags and life360
Lord Byron famously had a tame pet bear at university; he did it because the rules forbade pet dogs explicitly. The police state has been going for a while :)
Apparently until recently there was no rule about skinning bears in the dorms at Cornell. Kids at college can still be kids, at least until the administration catches wind of it
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cornell-university-stud...
What does police have to do with a field trip? What are you guys doing in the states?
There was no police involved. The police state attitude verbiage used by the OP refers to the constant monitoring of children and teens, by parents or other guardians, using things such as Apple FindMy to the point where teens can’t be mischievous to the degree they were able to in the past.
There’s also the implication that the repercussions are worse.
Is there an independent source for this story? The guy is not exactly a reliable narrator.
> My observation is that the young people who do drink aren't going for beers and wines, which are tastes that can take time to acquire, they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
Born in 1999, I qualify as GenZ. All my peers drink beer, which is unsurprising given the strong cultural presence. But more and more people have been moving to alcohol free beer, which is becoming more and more widespread. Loads of breweries reacted and started with alcohol free beers, even the ones you would have never expected, like Augustiner Bräu in Munich.
Pretty much all surveying data for my home country for the last few years suggests that GenZ is just drinking less alcohol overall. While there probably are some shifts within the consuming population, that does not fully explain the shift away from the alcoholic staples.
> they're going for sweet liquors and premix cans of fizz.
Not surprising, sweetness literally mutes palate sensitivity. Genzers are the most sugar addicted generation, from a very young age. It would not surprise me to see research in some future that this massive early life sugar exposure comes with muted development of taste.
I'm not surprised.
There's untold levels of chemicals in wine. Organic wine is BS in Europe, organic vineyards actually use more chemicals like giant quantities of copper sulphate. The US is actually a lot better than Europe in this regard.
Source: My father owned a vineyard in France before he keeled over with a subarachnoid haematoma after drinking 3 glasses of Rose at lunchtime.
And these things were cause and effect by some proof? Because there are plenty people who drink a bottle of white, red and/or rose for lunch here their entire lives to old age.
The point is the chemical levels in the wine. The anecdote about my father is just that. Please don’t trivialise that just to point score, it’s bad taste.
I used the anecdote to illustrate I have some experience in the wine industry, having worked hands on for a few years. My father studied chemistry at Cambridge so his understanding of wine chemistry is, or was, expert level.
I’d say the burden of proof is on you though, can you supply epidemiological evidence that wine isn’t harmful to health, if you’re going to advocate for the alcohol industry?
> Please don’t trivialise that just to point score, it’s bad taste.
Apologies; that was not my intention; I was reacting to your chemicals claim only.
I am not advocating; I am saying that I don’t believe it’s the other chemicals, it’s just alcohol, which is the poison in wine. They have 0.0 wine here which is just real wine with the alcohol removed after; that has then, I assume, the same chemicals and drinking that is harmful?
It's harmful as it tastes awful. At least compared to a good traditional wine.
> I’d say the burden of proof is on you though, can you supply epidemiological evidence that wine isn’t harmful to health, if you’re going to advocate for the alcohol industry
I do not think anyone would argue that alcohol consumption is good for your health, regardless of what kind of alcohol.
The burden is never on the person not making the claim. Come on man.
I'm not really making any strong claims except that people should look into the chemicals in wine. It's a complicated story. Unfortunately many of the USDA links are dead so this is the best evidence I have for the difference in wine standards in Europe vs the US.
https://www.winespectator.com/articles/us-and-europe-have-di...
They're making a far stronger counter claim:
> there are plenty people who drink a bottle of white, red and/or rose for lunch here their entire lives to old age.
" Because there are plenty people who drink a bottle of white, red and/or rose for lunch here their entire lives."
No one doubts that, but statistics are pretty clear, that those who do not do that, have a longer life.
Do they? Or does it just seem like it?
But is that alcohol or the other chemicals was my point; GP seem to imply it was the other chemicals; I doubt that. But yes, no alcohol would on average make you live longer.
> GP seem to imply it was the other chemicals
I didn't draw any conclusions or make a link, you assumed the link.
Let's look at some evidence instead. There are very high levels of TFA in wine:
https://www.pan-europe.info/press-releases/2025/04/study-rev...
It'll be decades before we know the true effects of the chemicals other than alcohol that are evidently present in wine, but TFA is known to pose serious health risks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifluoroacetic_acid
I find there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in people who are partial to a bottle or two, they tend to hang on to the myths that it's good for them.
Not the parent, but I have heard of this as well.[0] The advice in the article is to try to drink wine that is 2010 or older.
But I do raise my eyebrow at the suggestion that US wine is somehow in a better situation and am not inclined to believe it unless someone provides sources.
[0] "Alarming’ increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/23/alarming...
The labelling standards are a lot stricter in the US:
https://www.winespectator.com/articles/us-and-europe-have-di...
Thanks, it'd be interesting if there was an empirical testing study that reflected how much the labeling prevents the chemical contamination like the one observed in europe.
Do you have a source for those claims?
The “source” you do mention seems rather anecdotal, and linking it to the discussed topic requires a fair number of other assumptions, too.
I told an anecdote for illustrative purposes and made no explicit links. Others have assumed the link however.
My purpose was to draw people's attention to some lesser known aspects of the wine industry which I think are consequential, and I was illustrating I have some insignts into this that people that haven't worked in the industry probbaly don't.
Not the parent, but I have heard of this as well.[0] The advice in the article is to try to drink wine that is 2010 or older.
But I do raise my eyebrow at the suggestion that US wine is somehow in a better situation and am not inclined to believe it unless someone provides sources.
[0] "Alarming’ increase in levels of forever chemical TFA found in European wines"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/23/alarming...
> There's untold levels of chemicals in wine
Most notably the chemical alcohol is known to cause all sorts of health problems and is present in wine.
If you are going to talk about "chemicals", you should be more specific. Most chemicals are harmless, some aren't. Most likely alcohol is the most toxic chemical in wine by a wide margin.
You are correct of course.
You could also have just glanced at the rest of the thread where I've given far more specific evidence.
I'm rather glad I've drawn people's attention to the issue, despite having to endure extremely patronising comments like yours.
Second, I clearly have skin-in-the-game here because you did read the first comment, so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one (well done that was clever in 2015) can go forth and multiply.
> You could also have just glanced at the rest of the thread where I've given far more specific evidence.
You have not. Maybe you think you have, but just linking to the name of a chemical is not a cogent argument that that chemical in the quantities present in wine, are harmful in any way, and certainly not an argument for it being more harmful than the primary ingredient.
> having to endure extremely patronising comments
Apparently not patronising enough...
> so everyone that thinks it's OK to make jokes like the dihydrongen monoxide one
You really believe that alcohol is equivalent to water in its toxicity?
Look, i'm sorry for your loss. However you are basically spreading pseudo-science here. Doing so has potential to harm a lot of other people too.
My grandfather used to burn sulphur strips to clean the glass demijohns. I guess this is why most wine carry a sulphate allergy label these days. Apart from this, I don't recall any other "chemical" being used, other than sugar.
Of course, this was decades ago and today would be called "artisanal" wine making.
> I guess this is why most wine carry a sulphate allergy label these days.
Partly. There is some natural level of sulfites present in wines - very dependent on the terroir, and then the rest comes during the manufacturing process; some sulfites may be added directly so the wine does not spoil.
There are wines that do not contain any added sulfites and even then may cause trouble to the sensitive persons if the sulfur content of soil is naturally high. Some manufacturers therefore also add info about total measured sulfite content to the label.
And nowadays, not only demijohns or wooden barrels are used to hold wine; of course stainless steel vessels, but also concrete vessels and even things like the Georgian qvevri underground clay vessels or amphorae are having a comeback.
That's true of organic food in general.
> There's untold levels of chemicals in wine.
Such as dihydrogen monoxide?
You can't generalise from one wineyard in one country, but you know that. And France is hardly an organic wine leader.
Copper sulphate is a fungicide used for centuries and is pretty safe (so safe that my chemical engineer father was willing to use it in his otherwise completely sans-chemicals garden). Organic wine not only does not use (other) fungicides and herbicides; it also does not use other chemicals and processes in later stages of winemaking.
[always_has_been.jpg]
Before 2004 Germany had a %vol limit for selling alcohol to 16 year olds. In 2004 they changed the law such that it is not based on percentage, but whether it contains distilled alcohol to prevent under 18 year olds from drinking sweet alcopops, which apparently was a big thing back then.
That's what big tech wanted, looks like they succeeded. Hard to shove targeted ads into the eyeballs of people socializing with one another.
US politicians have been at war against teenage drinking since the 1980s when the minimum drinking age was raised. Gen Z social trends helped it along, but this is the desired outcome of bipartisan policy going back decades.
More than half of Gen Z is over the legal drinking age now, I’m not sure teen drinking is it
With US legal drinking age being 21, this eats into drinking at university/drinking after work, which is very much where bulk of socializing for young adults happens. Can't imagine it's not hugely affecting adulthood habits.
Eh, 21 limit was in place for all millennials and most of Gen X. And millennials drink like fish.
But lower teen drinking can lead to lower lifelong drinking. Habits formed during those years have inertia.
It might be policy but it’s not that new. Millennial here, we had no trouble getting alcohol under 21.
All thanks to crashing the economy and making the act of spending $15 on a low quality beer untenable for young adults giving 60+% of their income to rent.
Alcohol tax would have been a simpler and much less destructive means of achieving such a goal, but I guess breweries can't lobby when everything else is collapsing too.
When they introduced the higher alcohol tax here in Australia back in 2006(ish), all it did was push us to find ways to make it ourselves. Went from cheap to unbelievably cheap but completely unregulated. Who knows what the alcohol content of some of that stuff was. There are some vague fuzzy nights from that period.
You see the same trend in countries without a crashing economy. The economy is not the main reason.
since when did everyone, ditch personal responsibility to the drain ? I understand that social media platforms are hardcore unethical with the way they prioritize screentime and addiction
Over our wellbeing even at the cost of knowingly decreasing our attention spans with all the Shorts / Tiktok Algorithms.
But we must also take personal responsibility, it costed me $2 (/year) to buy a screen time addiction removal app that works for my iPhone, iPad and even my linux machine with firefox browser, and to lock down every damn social media app in both intervention and absolute blocking ways, and it worked great !
I moved from a screen time addiction of 9h / day to just using my phone in total for 2h out of which most of that is Phone Calls, Apple Music, and Booking Ubers. I was able to set free, and my life was better for it, because of my personal responsibility towards my own life.
It doesnt cost much / almost nothing, to reclaim your life back, there will always be people / organizations trying to screw you over, they have always existed since time millenium , be it corrupt empires, cults and anti-social religions, horrible food, bad peer pressure in school leading to poor influence, bad habits picked up from parents/elders in a kid's life.
The only consistent way that humans have been able to survive, thrive and personally excel in their own lives, against all odds of their society, family, and their sorroundings.
Is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. I sometimes feel many of us have given up on any outlook of fixing ourselves, i see it with my friends and my loved ones too, we have to make personal responsibility, popular again, if we want a better future.
Personal responsibility is what you focus on when you are talking to an individual. If you are trying to make your life better, or someone you know's life better, it is great to talk about personal responsibility and making choices for your life.
But that doesn't apply when we are talking about society wide shifts in behavior. It isn't like people suddenly got genetically better or worse at taking personal responsibility. If suddenly a lot fewer people are making healthy decisions, that isn't because we just happened to birth a bunch of people who don't take personal responsibility. Something has changed. Individuals have a lot of control over their own lives, but at a society level all of those individual decisions average out, and you are left with a representation of the effect of society.
Systemic problems require systemic solutions.
Yes people can get swept up in things and be unaware of downstream consequences of their actions, but you can also become informed and decide to change your behavior, find ways to mitigate damage, or communicate with others the damage/solution. How easy to wave your hand at the government or a corporate entity and abdicate responsibility, the parent is correct; personal accountability is faster and more effective than government regulations that also have knock on effects. My regulation example would be how cars in north america became less popular when fuel economy regulations were applied to them, but not SUVs creating the monster car epidemic we all live in.
Man, this was a really good response to that type of argument. I'm going to save it for later.
Classic "personal responsibility" argument used to subjegate the masses.
Individuals have personal responsibility, but the behaviour of a group of humans regresses towards the mean as it gets larger.
You can't assume someone will get fat just because you offer highly addictive processwd food, but you can assume the population as a whlle will.
I prefer the notion of shared responsibility.
We crossed over the "personal responsibility" rubicon somewhere around 2016 at the latest. Law is finally catching up in 2026 where Meta is settling/losing multiple lawsuits over the effects of addictive algorithms that caused mental anguish (or something like that. I don't remember the exact language).
Since we're at the legal stage, I hope we can finally get to a stage where such algorithms are treated as seriously as cigarettes. But society moves slowly, because the powers that profit from this pay to push back on regulation.
> My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life…
A barkeeper from a prestigious, world class cocktail bar around the corner told me that it really is more about health/alcohol.
He had a group the other day of 20 young people and 18 of them ordered non-alcoholic drinks. He is desperate about his profession.
I and virtually everyone in my generation have been constantly lectured throughout almost entire education about the dangers of smoking and drinking. As a result, while we smoke and drink heavily, it's not even close to our parents. So it makes perfect sense that the next generation, who were not only lectured their whole life but also didn't grow up surrounded by people smoking everywhere and drinking all the time, overwhelmingly avoided picking up these habits at all.
My take is that people “these days” just don’t want to put in the time, money or effort in socializing, especially with new groups of people. Be it dating, meetups or other social gatherings with strangers, it’s about giving as little as you can, in case the event turns out to be a dud. Why risk paying for 2 beers when you could buy one tea for less?
Now, how can I be so sure? Because I’ve been starving at some of these events, whereas others can seemingly call a single slice of pizza dinner.
There’s most definitely a health aspect in there too, but I don’t think it paints the whole story.
I dunno. I don't drink, but I do put time and effort to socialize.
It's just not related to drug consuming acts and more about sports, poker, board games, etc.
I believe that drug-related communications are flawed and closer to animal level than to actually joyful ones. It's better to have a maturity and social skills to communicate, joke and maintain a conversation with interesting people without stimulators.
I'm not from the US though so it's not about the US social scene which is mainly discussed here.
> closer to animal level than to actually joyful ones
That's exactly the point. To experience animalistic joy, rather than the socially-conditioned one.
> It's better to have a maturity and social skills
That's a very silly argument because it doesn't take into account the fact that a day has 24 hours and also people have different natural abilities. Imagine telling a kid with Down Syndrome "come on, you can do it, PhD in physics ain't that difficult".
> That's a very silly argument
I disagree.
Communication is a skill like everything else. Having a constant workaround just reduces your ability to be good at it. Why would a healthy young adult make his own skills worse?
You can either get short-term gains with long-term worsening of your daily life by being incapable of new connections and genuine communications or cut the short-term low-level improvements, suffer for a year or two, learn a bit and have a better life for years to come.
It's like going to gym or do other sports. It's often hard and unpleasant at the start, but the more you're doing it, the fitter you are and the more benefits you bring to yourself in the long-term.
You don't understand my core premise that given finite lifespan and finite attention, one can learn only a finite amount of things. People have shit to do and they cannot fit one more responsibility into their calendars. Not to mention that it takes two to tango so if you want to be fun and interesting while sober, you also need to convince your friends to also be sober so it's not all awkward.
It's really difficult to square the circle that being sober improves your communication skills long-term yet somehow young people have worse communication skills and less friends that previous generations of alcohlics.
> somehow young people have worse communication skills and less friends
I have a feeling that many young people sit behind the screen all the time.
My point doesn't work if you don't even try to socialize. Still have to make an effort and go through the uncomfortable awkward stage when you are shy or lost for words in most interactions.
I know enough no-drinkers who are just fine even with drinking people, that's the matter of empathy and being able to relax and being open without stimulators which is something not a given to people without a practice.
> My point doesn't work if you don't even try to socialize.
Yeah exactly. Alcohol makes it easier to start and then continue.
I could see it being a mix of both factors. Cash-strapped antisocial members staying at home, and the more outgoing career-focused gen-z members going out but trying to protect their sleep quality. feel like i know a decent amount of people in both of these buckets
I would agree with his opinion. You can see it with the increase of non-alcoholic wine and beer.
I mean, i am about to marry in about 2 months and have no one to invite as i never was able to socialize with anyone outside of school (and since then 5 years passed) and if they mostly have a unhealty relation to alcohol so i don't want to do something with them. I have like 1-2 friends that i can smoke with and also only know them because of that, we game in out free time and only meet to hand over some herbs. I would love to go out and meet new peers but i cannot without drinking and after spending like 60-70% on rent there is not enough to spend 6-8€ on a WATER.
Alcohol is one of the worst recreational drugs. Internet natives grew up with more access to information and less draconian drug laws than their predecessors.
In the 90s, MDMA got senators’ panties in a twist. Now, there are multiple 100k+ MDMA-focused events in the western USA annually.
I suspect this is temporary. I think eventually we'll see a wave of laws outlawing weed and psychedelics (again), and then alcohol will make a strong comeback. Booze has been part of civilization since the beginning. There’s even a theory that grains were domesticated so people could brew beer first, as opposed to making bread first. Also, there's talk that the new generation understands that alcohol is bad for your health, so they are stopping, but the reality is that we've known about alcohol's issues forever, yet people have not stopped. No way this will last.
I doubt weed will be made illegal again. It also has a history dating back thousands of years and even in places where weed is still treated as dangerous as things like heroin, has failed to really control its usage. It grows in pretty much any climate and can be consumed in "raw" form, so supply control is impossible.
It's still illegal federally in the US! It's illegal in many European countries and the UK. The places which have legalized it exist in a fragile state that could very easily be washed away with a moral panic again.
I would be more willing to bet on someone trying Prohibition 2.0 again.
This is a shoot from the hip idea. Speaking to younger folks, it seems to be much more cultural/social change rather than anything to do with health.
This might be an odd fluctuation to do with the first primarily social media generation? Don't know but that is just how I have seen it.
You are probably right about banning weed/vapes. They don't have anywhere near the same indoctrination into the structures of commerce and power that alcohol has.
> there's talk that the new generation understands that alcohol is bad for your health, so they are stopping, but the reality is that we've known about alcohol's issues forever, yet people have not stopped. No way this will last.
I never understood this logic. It can absolutely change. Tastes and habits do change in society sometimes forever. Just because people did a thing a long time ago and a tradition has lasted for thousands of years doesn't mean it will continue.
Generally speaking, the longer something has been common the more time it will continue to be common. A fad vs a trend vs a tradition. Of course alcohol use can change. We see several cohorts with very low alcohol consumption. It's just that if we've been doing something for thousands of years, we're likely to continue to do it for thousands of years.
This is far from the first fluctuation of alcohol consumption rates we have data for. This is a major trend that will last decades but not a march to long term 0.
On one hand, tobacco smoking in the US has dropped to tiny amounts among youth.
On the other hand, alcohol has already survived prohibition.
I've read several threads about how cigarettes are making a comeback because it's perceived as more natural or less chemical than vapes. If you care about facts at all you will find it completely wrong and intensely stupid, of course, but you just never know how people will react and then counter-react.
Sure, but we see traditions that have lasted for centuries die out, too.
Yes, it happens. It's even happened with alcohol in certain population cohorts. I would just want to see stronger data before predicting alcohol consumption going to zero. Alcohol is a tradition lasting millenniums.
Yeah, and a lot of them still drink. They just don't buy wine.
The grocery-store bottle lost to seltzers and stuff that comes in a can. That's a worse problem for a grape grower than people being sober.
Also fitness. The Covid "sheltered" population is also the Instagram generation, it's easier to get inspired, feel pressure from social media, or find information about how to become muscular. It's at odds with drinking.
There could be a link there. I've known people with eating disorders who only drink spirits because of the calorie content.
Ubiquitous cameras and social media surely play a role. Each and all of your drunk stupidities can and will get recorded and posted to your social group for eternal humiliation.
This I think is the key here. The traits I would associate with Millennials and Gen Z are all related to reacting to being watched all the time. And while alcohol can help a bit with anxiety, zero tolerance for just being a kid breeds a culture where doing anything that can be clipped is a bad idea. Basically, they are boring kids because anything at all that can be used against them is. I really feel sorry for them. If time machines existed and they could see how kids behaved in the past, I think they would destroy all their phones and computers immediately.
About Here did a good video on what they think the "problem" is with Gen Z (hint: they're a product of the environment they have inherited)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmLO69c_fyw
I'm using night life as a stand in for drinking, but I think it's closely related.
A big part of the increases in door costs are from two sources. Lower bar sales and a dramatic increase in the fees for DJs over the last 15 years. Also, taxes from city counsels, higher energy costs (speakers use lots of power), and the youth having less disposable income are also part of it. Basically, its a case of "its not one thing, its everything".
Some would argue those are all connected.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
My guess people are more stressed. Gallup has Gen z drinking more spirits. Preferred drink Ages 18–34 Liquor / Spirits 38%, Beer 36%, Wine 24% https://news.gallup.com/poll/713534/americans-drinking-remai...
Uneducated guess: wine is seen as more of an "older people's" drink making it uncool for gen-Z?
Or it's just bang-for-buck. If a bottle of vodka can be had for anywhere even vaguely in the ballpark of a bottle of wine (and at the grocery store scale, they often are: say, $15-20 for the wine and $20-30 for the vodka), then vodka (and maybe mixers) is gonna deliver a whole lot more intoxication per dollar.
I guess I just wrote a much longer variation of "candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker", eh?
(this is not drinking advice, folks: you'll do plenty more damage plenty faster with liquor, too)
Probably, yeah. N=1 and Europe, but that's what I remember from my university years. Wines were for dating; cheap beers and vodka with cola or juices was for general socializing. Cost was a factor for everyone; cheaper means more people could participate more often.
This generation doesn't know about how to be a proper wino. Go and take a look at the $7.99 1.5L jug bottles of carlo rossi next time you are in the grocery store. You will notice they are covered in dust. The charles shaw at trader joes still moves though. It's up to 4 buck chuck now.
> ...you'll do plenty more damage plenty faster with liquor, too
I'm skeptical. I don't see how there can be a meaningful difference between a regular-strength sixteen ounce beer and one shot of regular-strength vodka mixed in with slightly less than sixteen ounces of water. [0]
I do agree that -because you're drinking far less fluid- it's far easier for those who aren't monitoring how much they drink to get massively intoxicated when drinking liquor rather than beer or wine.
[0] ...other than taste, that is. Sixteen ounces of dilute vodka-water wouldn't be a joy to drink.
I don't see people carefully mix their liquor in the exact same proportions as beer and then drinking at exactly the same rate, so your argument is about as relevant to real world drinking as "if you mix 5% strength beer with four parts water it's basically not going to get you drunk". With or without normal amounts of (typically sweet) mixer, spirits tend to lend themselves to faster consumption and the carbonation in beer also has the property of giving you that buzzy feeling (and that vomity feeling) earlier so you don't feel quite so much inclination to top up.
...did you bother to read my second paragraph?
Also, like, what the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
One or more shots mixed with a small quantity of orange juice, typically served at between two and four times the alcohol concentration of beer and typically consumed at equivalent speed. What the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
Sure, I read your second paragraph, but as I pointed out in my own post, you might as well express skepticism that people harm themselves faster with beer than with shandy whilst treating not mixing beer with four parts water as edge case irresponsibility rather than how people actually drink it. Every drink is equally safe, diluted down enough...
> One or more shots mixed with a small quantity of orange juice...
I used to be a serious drinker and remain an abstinent alcoholic, but your description obligates me to ask "What the fuck is wrong with kids these days?".
> What the hell do you think a Screwdriver is?
One shot of vodka in a standard-breakfast-sized glass of orange juice.
> Sure, I read your second paragraph...
I -uh- think that whomever you tend to drink with is way more hardcore than I was... and that's frightening.
Tbf I don't know many young people who'd pound screwdrivers. Like IDK how different things were in the past but back when I was in university (right up until covid) the drink of choice was straight liquor plus a chaser. Many a party were had around handles of whiskey, vodka, or rum with limited "mixing in".
It was just outright more cost effective and as college students we just didn't have money for the alternative so most of the time it was hard liquor and maybe once a week we'd go out to drink and then it was mostly rail liquor mixed drinks or outright shots and shooters.
> Tbf I don't know many young people who'd pound screwdrivers. ...
Exactly. If you want to get fucked up, you drink it straight, or with minimal flavoring. If you want to drink on the cheap, you prep it in one of many "sane drinking" preparations, like a Screwdriver.
It’s the tech wet dream. Come back from work (where you are doing some manual labor the LLMs cannot automate yet), consume content while the rented rob car takes you to your apartment, get some weed and immerse yourself in your consumption device (phone, tv whatever).
Effectively every non sleeping minute of your life monetized by tech.
Doing a job that can't be automated sounds like the exact opposite of "monetized by tech" to me.
And if "people be watching videos" was the wet dream of tech monetization, we wouldn't need to be worried about tech monetization.
> Doing a job that can't be automated sounds like the exact opposite of "monetized by tech" to me.
The number of these jobs is constantly shrinking, and a lot of jobs actually have people training AI models to replace them.
U.K. figures of amount drunk at aged 25 has fallen
Born 1940s, about 14u/week. 1960s about 12u, By 1980s dropped to 10u, and by 2000 down to about 7-8.
It does feel like young people are more likely to go to a coffee shop than a pub if they want to socialise.
Is beer drinking also on the decline?
Or are we saying that wine drinking is significantly more social than beer drinking?
It's "interesting" that this new isolationist culture we've built for ourselves is causing economic problems
Yes, beer is down too, and these are global trends.
In Germany beer is down 20% in a decade, and 33% since 2000.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/4628/umfrage/...
Yes, beer drinking is also on the decline.
Based on the large selection of no-alcohol beers I'm seeing I would say yes.
There is a good annual survey on substance use that essentially confirms your observations- the monitoring the future survey (https://monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/m...)
I wonder also if Covid exasperated that for some too.
I may be old-fashioned but the substitute mind-altering drugs you're mentioning does not sound like a more responsible pathway.
Alcohol is a mind-altering drug! And I expect it has worse long-term consequences than quite a few of the other drugs that have become more mainstream recently.
Yea, but the currently popular drug with kids is a tranquilizer normally given to horses. I'm not sure you have these things in perspective.
Ketamine is also normally given to humans. It is used in hospitals as a sedative/anesthetic, and also in depression treatment.
Used responsibly it's perfectly safe. Much less harmful than alcohol. I don't know why people assume that something is unsafe just because we give it to horses. Do you think people want to harm their horses?
No. As much as everyone wants to cheer on weed it’s long term biochemical and mental effects are very real.
This is an argument I have had on both sides. One side demonized it, the other said it could do no wrong.
No, weed is not a one way path to a death sentence as you become a raving Satanist! But it also isn't harmless and there are things to keep an eye on, just because it doesn't kill you doesn't mean it gets the all clear.
If you want to do it, go for it, but please be aware of the potential issues.
They are significant but so are those of alcohol. Most data indicates weed is safer. (This study puts it at about half in terms of harm to the user: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285843262_Drug_harm... . Alcohol ranks the highest in terms of harms to others but that is also a function of how widely it is used)
it's really not
looking from the tail end of the generation, many of my friends ( and also I ) were led to believe somehow that things like marijuana, psychedelics, non-Alcohol have such low consequences that are entirely a rounding error compared to alcohol. which is ...
I’m in the same age group and I agree but I feel frustrated that our grandparents went with “marijuana is the gateway to hell” as the social message.
I don’t know if there is responsible weed or psychedelic use (not my area) but I’m confident that responsible alcohol consumption exists.
Though I doubt any of it is a net benefit to society.
Idk, when I was young I was drinking heavily, today I drink some beers and smoke weed and I feel I’m much better for it. It doesn’t ruin the next day and I can do more things. But you can definitely overdo it. Psychedelics definitely can mess with your head, though, if not careful.
I have a couple friends in their 60s who drank a single glass of wine every day, for decades. Then, they decided to stop. They were amazed at how much better they felt.
Cannabis today is much stronger than it was in the 70s.
In places in the US where it’s now been decriminalized, it’s a completely different beast from what it was in the 70s. So much so that the potency of the plants kind of isn’t even relevant anymore for typical users. It’s a far cry from when I was a kid and there was peer pressure to keep taking hits from a joint of unknown potency at too quick a pace to do any sort of dose control.
The people I know who are using it are buying it as tablets and gummies that come in 1mg increment doses, and taking exactly as much as they want to have, which typically isn’t much.
Vape pens are presumably also more consistent and predictable, and seem to be taking over. I can’t even remember the last time I smelled actual weed smoke.
It actually strikes me as much more healthy than alcohol culture, where dose control can still be a problem because it’s hard to tell how many units of alcohol the bartender put in your cocktail, and driving home afterward is still quite normalized.
It's still inconsistent as fuck. There's no real industry standards and analysis. The same gummies from the same pack bought at a dispensary can vary wildly in my experience. Pens are a bit more consistent. But yeah not as variable as the bathtub gravity bong rips of random weed that people got from who knows where.
Yes I find this a big difference in modern weed culture and alcohol culture. At my age most of my friends know their tolerance for weed quite well and we usually keep low dosage edibles around just to offer for friends who consume weed a couple times a year.
While I don't drink that much anymore, when I do I just kinda have a murky mental binder of how strong a drink is at a given venue I've visited before but even then it's very unsophisticated.
I recall a "60 Minutes" segment on it asserting that cannabis today is much stronger.
I think their argument is that while it's stronger (and it is), it's also more predictable and has safer and more predictable delivery mechanisms.
Also, there are high grade derived products that do exactly what's on the label.
For an example of reasonable use: if you want to lower anxiety a bit, which is a primary driver of alcohol use, you can now reliably get a high CBT strain, or CBT gummies, or CBT vapes, and they are generally less dangerous and less addictive than other chemical solutions.
This would also hold for decriminalising party drugs. Most of the fentanyl deaths for instance are in people that didn't even know they're having fentanyl.
Yeah, more or less. From what I can tell few people really want to just smoke the plant anymore. That makes the THC concentration in the plant itself less relevant to a discussion of potential harm of cannabis consumption. Because there’s some amount of remove between the production yield of the raw material and the potency of the finished consumer product.
You can make an argument in the other for alcohol. Yeast can only ferment up to a certain alcohol concentration and then they die. But that doesn’t tell us much about the potency of consumer alcohol products because we have a variety of manufacturing processes for controlling alcohol concentration. These it’s less common, outside of home production, to just accept whatever unpredictable thing the yeast are doing and call it good.
Potency is an interesting subject because in theory one should have consume less amounts over the same time period for the same effect. In other words, smoking one potent joint, while carrying its own risks, is probably healthier than smoking n > 1 joints to get a similar effect.
Cannabis, the literal plant, is strong than the 70s, but it's not like humans haven't been making concentrates (hash, resins, etc.) for 1000s of years.
Indeed. Alcohol is so much more dangerous and damaging to peoples lives and the lives of those around them that it doesn't even compare. Alcohol would never be legal if discovered today. Compared to alcohol the risks of cannabis are a rounding error.
But that's only because alcohol is so incredibly dangerous. There is real risk with inhaling particulates and burning gases into your lungs. And it should not be ignored. It's just that compared to the lives ended by alcohol it is a rounding error and that makes it seem safe. Neither are.
Alcohol is deeply deeply ingrained in society. (Almost) universally. It has been for thousands of years. I just don't think you can extricate history and culture from how we set policy and views on alcohol.
While it may be rational to try to lump it with other newer dangerous substances, removing alcohol from humanity would be full on cultural erasure for many places. Not to mention to total destruction of entire industries that people's livelihoods depend on.
I guess a way to think of it is - if it was part of culture for 1000s of years it'll probably take at least 100s of years to phase out.
there was some commentary on the amazing regenerative power of the liver on a post here a few days ago to this end. i did a little more homework and the way in which agricultural civlization and the ability of the liver to process ethanol evolved in parallel is profound. some settlement had a bumper crop of wheat enough to ferment over the winter and they were like, sheeeeeit and then the liver was like sheeeeeeeit
we've been collectively alcoholic for 15000 years, turning the body's chemical filtration plant into the body's largest organ that is literally called the liver, and we're supposed to give it up in 20 years? bosh. flimshaw
I don't think we will give it up in the next 20 centuries.
Cannabis was the same to some extent. Psychedelics too in the context of rites.
Yes but not nearly in the way alcohol is.
Alcohol used to be safer than water to drink for a period in time.
I agree. Individuals have the right to chose to damage their bodies if they wish. And laws already exist covering hurting other people while irresponsibly intoxicated. I see no reason to try to use state violence to prevent people from hurting themselves with alcohol. This doesn't change that alcohol is a poison and seriously incapacitating compared to say, cannabis.
No they don't. unless you think health care should be singularly the responsibility of the individual and we have no responsibility for caring for the sick or seriously injured even if they have lack the financial resources to cover expenses.
That's a very slippery slope. What are you going to ban next, extreme sports? Running too fast? Eating french fries?
Alcohol is engrained because it was safe to drink because of the process of fermentation. However, it had much lower alcohol content and certaknly the hard liquors we know now were almost never at all drunk.
Your comparing 1-2% alcohol consumed because the regular drinking water was not accessible and unsafe to 7%+ alcohol consumed for recreation. Disengenuous.
People have been drinking wine for 8000 years. Grapes ferment in the 10% abv range.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1714728114
Some Roman wines were drunk undiluted in the 14% range
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/vint...
Your numbers are completely made up.
Extract a sugary liquid from fruit or malted grain, expose it to the pervasive and random yeast in the air around us and if it doesn't mold over first you'll probably get something in the 8% ABV range before the alcohol waste product inhibits the yeasts' metabolism. With some deliberate cultivation, which humans thousands of years ago figured out, you can selectively breed the yeast slurry in your vessels up to a 11-14% alcohol tolerance. They didn't know the science but they knew the process.
Leave it exposed and you'll eventually get a random acetobacter infection and ta-da, now you have a vat of vinegar. Which would still have utility, but is much less fun.
The 1-2% alcohol drinks were called "small beers" and were the second runnings off the grain that was used to make full-strength beers or barleywines. Humans liked variety.
And people drank water, not just alcoholic small beers, there are depictions of water filters dating back at least 3500 years, and a long history of water purification techniques, and a ton of ancient wells which were dug.
Alcohol is indeed dangerous, but I think it is misleading to compare the number of lives ended by alcohol to the number of lives ended by other recreational drugs just because there is a much larger number of people consuming alcohol. Almost everybody who consumes alcohol is not an alcoholic.
you should go look back at profiling and optimization
if you want to fix the most things with the least effort, you optimize the hot paths. in this case, thats alcohol and tabacco. they have the biggest opportunity
That's dumb though because then you just push people to other things and you will see the same issues arise as consumption increases to alcohol levels and there's a reasonable probability they will be worse. Already the percent of fatal accidents involving active marijuana found in the blood stream is higher than alcohol car fatalities. 40% vs 30%. Homicides show a similar pattern. And marijuana consumption is only 17% vs 54%. All time high for MJ and near all time low for alcohol.
Alcohol is consistently more dangerous statistically than most other things, I doubt lowering consumption is the driving factor behind the patterns you're mentioning.
What is “active marijuana?”
I optimize the things where I get the most benefit per hour of work. Banning alcohol is so difficult politically that it’s not obvious that this is the best thing to work on to improve public health.
Smoking kills several times more people per year than alcohol use. The CDC attributes 480k to smoking vs 178k from alcohol. People smoking cannibis likely smoke less than those smoking tobacco but it’s not safe. Maybe try edibles instead?
https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/tobacco/data_statistics/...
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/index.html
All recreational drugs, legal or otherwise, are mind-altering.
Alcohol is responsible for more deaths and addiction that any other drug in the world.
Not only that, alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood, which in essence means the feeling you get from drinking is brain damage.
Notice how like 90-95% of the tkme when skmeone does something uncharecteristically horrible such as rape, murder of passion, or assault, they are drunk. Is that a coincidence?
That's not even talking about drunk driving, one of the leadings cause for all major traffic accidents in the US.
Prohibition literally started because drunkards were beating their wives, wasting their entire paycheck at the saloon (free lunch), and other savagry so much the women, who couldn't even vote at the time, were so pissed off they created the the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Let's be clear here too, most temperance groups were the biggest supporters of abolition. Only reason abolition didn't work is the government was too lax on enforcement and allowed written doctors notes for alcohol use the basis for evil organizations like CVS and Walgeens that have devestated this country as the distribution arm of the highly lucrative pharmecuetical drug trade.
>alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood
Blood oxygen is quickly and cheaply measured with a pulse oximeter, which shows this to be false. The primary mechanism of action of ethanol is increasing the sensitivity of some GABA receptors (similar to benzodiazepines and barbiturates). But ethanol has very complex pharmacology, which a huge number of other targets. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacology_of_ethanol
Yup. That original post had several factual errors.
I am not a supporter of alcohol, but I find it kind of funny when some people demonize alcohol (which I agree is bad for one's health and has many negative externalities, but which has been used by our societies for millennia and its effects are relatively well understood, at least phenomenologically from extensive experience) and drop it in favor of much less understood and often much more dangerous drugs.
But that is also because it has been used much more often than other drugs. Don't get me wrong, I agree that alcohol has some very bad effects. But if you ban (or decrease consumption of) alcohol, but that gets compensated by an increase in the usage of other drugs (which I am not saying is inevitable), you might be trading a bad situation for something far worse.
A personal anecdote. My extended family has a long history of substance abuse and addiction. Of course, historically the substance so abused has mostly been alcohol (and tobacco, but that is less harmful in this kind of sense), and I saw [both first-hand and second-hand] a lot of direct and indirect effects of it that were very harmful and destructive. But recently, with another family member, I also saw first-hand the effects of addiction to another drug, methamphetamine, with induced psychosis, and I would choose dealing with an alcohol addict over this a thousand times. At least an alcohol addict is unlikely to suddenly decide to murder you, or to jump out of window, or any such mad move, just because some demons tell them or they suddenly realize that you have been an alien or a reptilian all along, or any similar crazy thing [which is actually pretty horrific when you face it in a real life from a close person]. A drunk person is also much more easily defeated physically than somebody who is high on meth and has some psychotic episode. [Though I am aware that alcohol caused or catalyzed many violent attack and murders too, I am not trying to trivialize that.]
Stop saying accident when you really mean crash. Especially in the context of drunk driving.
Drunk driving is a conscious decision, not an accident.
The parent is clearly implying the more reponsible pathway is: neither.
i replied to wrong person my fault
In the real world telling people to make the hard choice you support (such as abstinence only stances) makes a large majority dismiss you completely. It’s mostly self-serving sort of advice that might apply to individuals, but we already know you can’t enforce it on a society.
You really. Really really. Need to research the temperance movement and the utter disaster that it was.
You’re regurgitation of propaganda here is so laughably missing the point.
Downvote me if you want but look it up. The temperance movement and prohibition that followed was run by wealthy women who filled their time judging the lower classes and factory owners who wanted to end labor union meetings and continue to underpay workers in horrid conditions while blaming alcohol as the problem.
Easily one of americas worst decisions and propaganda people like you still believe to this day.
I think that is the point parent is making
It's a tiny bit "healthier" (high people are much less dangerous than drunk people), but it's still not particularly responsible.
But it is much cheaper. And Gen Z by necessity is more price sensitive than other generations.
You're right, but the idea that "Oh I'm not drinking it's just not healthy" is more common among younger people I've noticed than it was around people who were older when I was very young. I meet many young people whose main two activities are overworking and overly gymming/fitness activities. Such people drink a lot less than normal.
Afaik, they also commit less crimes and get less pregnant as teenagers. They are overall more responsible then the generation that complains about them.
Question is, is it being responsible, or apathetic and lethargic? How do you distinguish responsible character from clinical depression?
> How do you distinguish responsible character from clinical depression?
By how much work you get done. That's it. You can be the saddest sack of shit in the whole wide world and, as long as you keep being productive, nobody will notice.
At my worst, I kept grinding even though I was one step away from jumping off the nearest bridge so nobody could tell I was this depressed.
We know their attitudes too, yes they are being responsible.
But also, violence, unsafe sex and excessive risk taking are all reactions to mental health problem. People engage in them to make whatever issue they have feel better.
> While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
All of these are cheap. As long as you got a garden and it's legal, growing weed is ridiculously easy - it's literally called weed because it thrives pretty much anywhere. Vapes are much cheaper than cigarettes (eh, we'll see how long that lasts and authorities crack down on shops selling smuggled / greymarket vapes...).
In contrast, going out and getting drunk to the point of getting decently hammered can easily cost you 100€ and more here in Germany, and we have low alcohol taxes...
People are not growing their own anything at all scale necessary to be responsible for the decline.
Your anecdote is meaningless. And you're the only one who said "responsible". It doesn't appear in the quote.
They didnt say it was in the article
> It's a nice claim to say
kinda implies the claim was said
Anecdotal experience tells me that they're just better at hiding it than previous generations. Gen-z is depressed, and depressed people reach for drugs and alcohol to cope. I think we're going to find that the data on this has been manipulated.
Wine is also sweet and sweetness is unhealthy. Part of the Gen Z crowd that doesn't give a shit about wine is correctly disillusioned with flawed culture. We don't live in a world where you can get by growing grapes and making wine at your small vineyard. It's industrial. There is no bottle of wine actually worth $1000 to anyone with a sense of pragmatism and the fact such expensive wine exists just turns people off from caring about wine. A lot of societal ills come from the fact that we have old people unwilling to change running the world. Gen Z is doing okay considering the rent-laden prison they grew up in.
>Wine is also sweet and sweetness is unhealthy.
Scrunching up my face trying to figure out how to respond to this...
I think you are right that a lot of the wine which people consume, the mega industrial mass volume stuff sold in supermarkets, is a bit sweet, although often not by a lot--Josh and Bota Box, two of the biggest brands, have like 5-10 g/L of sugar. Stuff like La Marca Prosecco and Barefoot Pink Moscato is noticeably sweeter.
However, in general, I don't think it's fair to say "wine is sweet". Wine in general is not sweet outside of certain styles that are intended to be so. If you grow grapes, crush them, and ferment them, the fermentation will generally run until the yeast run out of sugar, leaving only trace amounts behind.
I've noticed that a lot of people who don't have that much experience with wine will tend to mis-identify things as sweetness when they're really noticing some other aspect of the wine.
Perhaps demand is going down abroad due to people eschewing US products.
The article mentions this - Canada was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.
I suspect wine is extremely susceptible to this effect too. It’s basically always stocked alongside produce from many other countries, the origin is most of the marketing, and there aren’t really any stand out brands. I’ve probably had a Californian wine before but couldn’t name a single one.
If you own a venue or store and decide to stop stocking American alcohol, someone will probably notice you don’t have Jack Daniel’s but not that you’ve stopped selling Californian wine.
Anecdotally, the only American liquor that was widely missed was Bourbon.
I say it in past tense because Bourbon drinkers in Canada are switching to similar liquors. "Corn Whisky" is selling well, now.
Even if it ends up back on the shelves the damage is done. Many will avoid American products until the day they die, and endeavour to teach their children to do the same.
America doesn't need anything from the rest of the world, or so is claimed, so the rest of the world should not burden itself with purchasing American exports.
The same thing is happening in Marlborough, NZ - the center of the wine industry in New Zealand. (And probably elsewhere in NZ, but Marlborough is where I grew up). All my life, every year has seen more and more vineyards throughout the valley, until a few years ago it began to slow and recently they've actually pulled some out, which is totally unheard of.
If so its been going on for a long time. I remember seeing UK TV ads in the 70's/80's for Paul Mason's Californian Carafes - cheap/mainstream wine. Now I'd say most American wines for sale in Europe are higher end and more expensive.
If you want a cheap bottle of wine it would be New Zealand, Chilean or Spanish
This.
OMG, it's interesting to see how the average person reasons about the world.
You have your pet theory, you, without evidence, decide that every fact you see is confirmation for that theory, so now you believe your theory even more.
I want to say something to make you feel bad about this, but you think I'm telling you that you were right all along.
Do we really need evidence to draw a line between the US's biggest trading partners boycotting the US alcohol industry and a drop in sales in the US alcohol industry? I feel like the only way you don't make that connection is if you're either severely uninformed or so lost down the MAGA rabbit hole you've forgotten the taste of food, the sound of water, the touch of grass...
Yes, you need evidence lol. Yes.
Thank you for confirming my point though.
Do you really go through life seeing confirmation of all your beliefs everywhere, without ever checking?
US consumers spend about $115 Billion annually on wine. Exports to canada are less than 1% of that. I don't see how Canada matters much to the US in general, and specifically it doesn't make sense that a 70% reduction in half a percent of wine sales (that's like 0.4% reduction overall) is a major factor in putting the industry out of business, but you are welcome to look it up yourself or correct me. Keep in mind that US wine sold in canada will have gone through several hands and be heavily taxed, so the amount per bottle getting back to grape growers is a very small percentage of that already tiny percentage.
But of course you won't bother to look it up, you will just roll your eyes and assume US grape growers are being forced out of business because Manitoba's liquor stores are finally flexing their international influence!
Where I live in Canada, it's not even a case of the consumers boycotting the products... they've been ordered to be removed from the shelves by the government. They're not even an _option_ to purchase. I think it's fair to say there's a bit of a cause-and-effect thing going on there when it comes to the impact on American alcohol producers. And when/if they do return to shelves, the general sentiment seems to suggest they still won't sell very well.
The fact that US wine declines more than other wine isn't a theory it's a fact. The reason could have several theories. One is that people are simply boycotting. This is supported by polls etc. But another would be if prices drift apart and a strong dollar makes US wine less attractive relative to (say) French and Italian wines.
As usual the reason overall wine sales would be down e.g. 10% and US wine sales down 20% in a country will be a combination of multiple factors. My pet theory though is that at least for some countries, the boycott factor is the big one.
My parents live in a massive fruit growing region of the country. Just this year, 2 of the major packing firms in the county both declared bankruptcy. It's not just the trade war, but years of shrinking seasonal workers that fell off to a trickle as well.
The knock on effect is massive. The seasonal workers supported a large permanent workforce - and more importantly tax revenues in the county are collapsing.
But the really important thing to understand is that once the industry is gone, it's gone for a long time. The other markets competing with the US are already expanding their industries to fill the void. Once those trees are planted, they produce fruit for several decades to come.
From a layman perspective, American fruit growers refused to change with the times. How long are they still trying to make the “Red Delicious” apple work? Another ex-major packer I know of made the peach fruit cups, which people have been catching on are just filled with corn syrup. But these have been long term purchasing trends, yet the growers seemed blindsided by the packers ceasing operations.
There has been massive innovation and development in apples in the past 20 years. Every apple farm with a clue is growing trees for the past decade that look nothing like the trees of old. They’re growing varieties that didn’t exist 20 years ago. If you’re still seeing Red Delicious anywhere, it’s on the buyers at your local markets that missed the boat.
I mean it also takes a long to build an orchard and get the apples to fruit. So older orchards are happily still producing old varietals instead of ripping and replacing the trees. Not everything old must be replaced with new - so wasteful.
Espaliers and different pruning techniques can have you up and producing fruit in 3-5 years. Totally popping under 10.
I planted an apple tree in my yard 20 years go, just for fun. Last year, it finally decided to push out more than a few apples. This year, it put out so many the branches have bent nearly to the ground.
Get the fruit off the tree. I had one blow over and die because it was too heavy in strong wind
Sounds like a good idea.
Possibly you know this but there are pruning techniques to get a good yield of also good tasting apples
Of course you don't replace everything old with new.
But when the specific varietal always sucked, that's a good reason to replace it.
Idiot consumers forcing us to take forever for market innovations to come to market is not even close to new, and the consumers 100% deserve the blame, contempt, and policies designed to frustrate them.
I have to deal with this crap right now in the world of laundry and adjacent world of cleaning. We've had new Enzymes finally hitting the market en-mass for the first time in decades (DNAse/Lipase) which when combined in full spectrum with all other known enzymes leads to truly superior cleaning results. Literally no one has any excuse anymore for smelly clothes as a result of these innovations, and it's probably going to take another 5 years minimum for anyone outside of the nerds on r/laundry and other enthusiast communities to take advantage of these new innovations. For now, the so called "gold standard" Tide laundry detergent people are buying is straight up incomplete and could be tomorrow reformulated with both enzymes to radically improve its performance and isn't for... reasons???
Where else have we straight up regressed on technology? Vacuum cleaners were better in the 1980s when a higher percentage of America used central vacuums, an objectively superior technology. Guns were often made to higher metallurgical standards, CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s.
"Worse is better", literally, and all because of idiot consumers voting wrong with their wallet. They deserve contempt.
Oh, and Americans refusing to embrace bidet toilet seats, or air purification (both important circa covid, fecal plums and poor indoor air quality were a significant infection vector!)
The enzyme stuff is funny to me. DNAse, no purpose there. Why not RNAse too? People can't articulate why they even want a DNA degrading enzyme. Lipase to degrade lipids seems good, but then again, that is already the function of soap.
I knew a number of people whose home had central vacs but funny enough, none of them worked anymore. It was a sort of "what's that weird plug thing" conversation that lead to that somewhat underwhelming finding. I get the sense it is one of those things where if you want it fixed, you'd have to call a technician who will probably give you a quote you don't want to hear. Then you just forget about ever getting it fixed.
Exhibit A on "why it takes 5 years for awesome innovations to come to market" right here!
I don't know that central vacs were the height of vac technology, but I cannot understand how weak cordless/battery vacuums have such marketshare compared to a vacuum unit that gets 110/240v of power direct from the wall.
No one wants to wrangle a cord or locate a plug evidently. I don't mind it but people have made their choice.
i don't think one necessarily needs the best of the best... probably cheap is enough for a bunch of people
i'll start by having my OLED smartphone dying after many years and the one i got used LCD. much worse and it felt like plastic. colors, brightness, even if my screen now refreshes twice as fast as the previous - fast forward 2 years i don't think i ever thought about the difference, nor saw it after 1 or 2 weeks with my phone
totally valid critique on durable products and better substances for cleaning although
> CRT vector displays (Vectrex) to this day get better effective refresh rates, brightness, and glow effects than existing displays (OLED) and peaked in the 1980s
Except that they're absolutely huge and heavy for any halfway decent screen size and resolution. If I were to replace my two 24-inch screens with CRTs, I'd need a second desk for them alone.
I literally can’t think of the last time I had laundry that didn’t clean up perfectly fine with normal laundry detergent.
WTF?
This just sounds like yet another thing that can give me a rash or some kind of weird cancer in 20 years.
A lot depends on what clothes you're washing. Modern enzymes are most useful with modern synthetic material blends, especially underwear. If you've ever had that type of thing stay stinky after washing, that's what's missing.
If you're wearing mostly cotton, normal detergent is largely fine unless it's heavily soiled/stained.
Ever tried getting curry or blood stains out of anything?
Ok so I have a soy sauce, or so I think it is, stain that I can't remove on a shirt. Is it still possible to clean it? Nothing I've tried seems to get rid of it.
That is where the enzyme cleaners might help. It’s a protein stain.
They sell little cleaner sticks (look like deodorant sticks or the like). Most dry cleaners will have someone who specializes in stain removal.
Blood stains are easy. Wash cold, and they come right out.
I can’t remember the last time I had curry stains on anything, and I lived in central India for a year. I just used the typical local detergent and did my own laundry. Always cold though, well as cold as it would ever get - 80F was typical.
You might be lucky. Those both typically don't wash out and can set if you do it wrong.
For curry, it does get better if you leave it out in the sun a day and pretreat it, I forget why.
I just wash them in cold water the moment they happen (or as close to it as possible), with some soap. Works fine.
Setting takes time. Heat makes it worse, as it accelerates the chemical reactions.
Most of the heavy duty stuff is when people ignore it, or industrial settings.
Is that why apples just taste like sugary water nowadays and barely taste of apples?
I have no idea what you are talking about. The honeycrisp revolution made me like apples again. Maybe your taste buds have changed?
Cosmic Crisp was marketed to growers as a replacement for Red Delicious with a similar shipping toughness and a long shelf life.
I guess I’m out of the loop. What’s with the Red Delicious hate?
My wife and I used to drive around aimlessly when I was in grad school and she was just starting her career as a doctor. We found that it was a good way to relax, and we sometimes discovered fun local gems when we did this.
One weekend we stumbled on a local apple orchard doing a cider making demonstration. We were the only people there so the orchardist (he called himself a “pomoculturist”) personally showed us around, picking an occasional apple, telling us about it, and then encouraging us to take a bite.
At one point he picked a deeply dark purple, almost black, apple and handed it to me. “Black Oxford” The flavor was intense: acidic, sweet, floral. Then another, dark red and fragrant. “Winesap” Then “Belle de Boskoop”. And on and on.
None of these apples are sold commercially except at small scale directly from orchards. The flavors, appearances, and aromas of apples is truly astonishing. So I think that’s why Red Delicious gets all the hate. The world of apples is amazing and huge.
I prefer to see Red Delicious as yet another miracle of apple genetics, just one that I don’t personally care for. But if you have the opportunity to visit an heirloom orchard, please do.
For me, it was a life-changing event: I now have a small heirloom orchard of my own.
It's mealy, bitter, and has a thick unpleasant skin. Many articles call it "the worst apple in the world." Decades of engineering it for transportability at the cost of taste and edibility are to blame.
But the U.S. has created new, much better apples, like Cosmic Crisp (2020)
Honeycrisp is still the king, and afaik farmers hate growing it.
I've read that Honeycrisp is difficult to grow, that's probably why.
Cosmic Crisp is much easier to grow, at least in the climate it was developed for/in. Those 2 varieties are somewhat similar, although I find Honeycrisp a bit more subtle in flavor and enjoyable, while Cosmic Crisp has just a strong sweet/tart flavor.
>"Honeycrisp " - it was my love until it was not. over the years the taste and texture have completely changed
My understanding is that demand killed the Honeycrisp. When it first came out, it was very delicate and could only be grown in certain places. But it was a perfect apple- crisp and sweet and bursting with flavor. So everyone who tasted one loved it and wanted more.
And so the food scientists went to work, and figured out how to cross-breed in the ability to grow in a wider variety of places. And adding in the capability to grow in large numbers like the Red Delicious turned the Honeycrisp into an apple that tasted more like the Red Delicious.
The US is really amazingly good at growing food, but it is because the physical reality- not just transportation but growing conditions- trumps taste in the main.
Are there any rules about labeling that can distinguish the old and new Honeycrisps?
Edit: https://www.seriouseats.com/how-honeycrisp-apples-went-from-...
Based on this a big problem is overlong storage, which could be avoided with some effort into local purchasing.
My advice, as someone who grew up regularly apple-picking, for going local is to prefer the types that are local versus the names that you recognize from the supermarket. Unless you are in exactly the right area (upper Midwest), you will be much better off with the best apples for your region then with a locally grown Honeycrisp.
In upstate New York, I would recommend Autumn Crisp, Blondee, Macoun and Shizuka. I haven't picked apples in Virginia in about a decade, so I'm probably out of date on the right types to get there, but I remember loving Stayman apples.
smdh even my apples are getting enshittified
I've enjoyed listening to dozens of talks by Alan Watts, who is a pretty chill guy until he comes across the subject of red delicious apples. Never heard him curse about any other subject.
The Red Delicious has been optimized for the growers, packers, and grocery stores, and not the consumer. The priorities are thick skin so they can be roughly handled, and bright red because they believed that's what would make people purchase them. "Cosmic Crisp" is their answer to the Honeycrisp, by trying to tweak the Red Delicious instead of abandoning it. I see it as the equivalent of "a faster horse" dilemma.
It's mealy, tastes pasty and bland with no flavor. Honeycrisp so much better tasting and texture! Red delicious were bred to have a dark red outside and look like a classic "apple" while sacrificing the apple flavor inside.
The original Red Delicious wasn’t even bred, but was just a chance seedling found by chance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Delicious
No idea if this is still true of what is currently sold under the name. All apple verities are clones so the they should be (mostly) the same but the verity is old enough to not have anyone protecting the name.
Red Delicious is not a pure clone of the original. Random genetic mutations have happens over the years and those were cloned. Normal breeding has more genetic variation but clones get some
Normal Apple trees will have wildly different flavors on even individual branches.
Specific varietals are from cloning specific branches widely, but at some point it often gets ‘lost’ due to natural imperfect cloning.
I am somehow in the "I like Red Delicious" camp. Perhaps because I was used to Kashmiri apples, that apparently share the cultivar roots of red delicious. Never liked the more acidic varieties. Actually like the "mealy" texture - (it feels grainy to me)
https://applerankings.com/red-delicious-apple-review/
This site is good fun, thanks.
In my family they’ve always been known as “those apples that look pretty on the shelf at the supermarket but taste like cardboard and aren’t even good for cooking”. We’ll all opt for just about any other cultivar if given the choice.
Well, they kind of suck these days, at least compared to how we remember they used to taste.
Who know if they are actually the same, plain genetic drift, or they have been selected to be more shelf stable at the cost of taste.
I remember Red Delicious being kinda gross in the early 90s. Bitter and cardboardy.
However, it seems there are multiple things with that name. I've had one that looked different and tasted... less bad.
No. They kept trying to push it over here.
It was always grim, bitter, but "oh so pretty".
While the red delicious are a good usually-large American apple that ships easily the newer varieties are much tastier.
Nobody in any major apple growing region (Washington) is growing Red Delicious as their main apple variety for consumers, not even close. They're all growing various club apples (e.g. Envy, Cosmic Crisp), and there's massive competition to be the next honeycrisp (btw, honeycrisp quality is seasonal due to packaging, out of season they're significantly worse because they've been in storage for a long time, Apples are harvested only once a year)
See this as a list of merely the most popular varieties you can find at stores: https://waapple.org/varieties/all/
Wait for climate change to really get started.
Why has the seasonal workforce shrunk?
Usually most staffing issues can be solved with higher wages. Could it be a solution here?
https://www.kuow.org/governing/2026-03-23/between-ice-and-a-...
Oh, I read this as "disease killed the fruit=>the packing companies went bankrupt=>the farmers stopped growing=>no one needed a seasonal workforce=>all of the people who served the seasonal workforce lost their jobs."
Something like this for oranges: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2026/04/florida-oran...
The thing about the "wages are low because of immigrants" is that it neglects that all of those immigrants are consumers just as much as they producers. They need food, medical care, places to relax, places to live, and so these immigrants employ plenty of native born people, people who would not have jobs if those immigrants weren't there consuming. Even if you could get higher wages to draw other native born people in from another part of the country, then you are just stealing the people and all of this sort of consumption from another part of your same country.
Not all farm workers are immigrants, legal or otherwise. There are many temporary, seasonal workers that make poverty wages, but it's more than they would make in Mexico or wherever else. The farms provide basic necessities and pay the workers as little as possible.
I’d imagine many of them are immigrants that either fled, were deported, or decided not to return for the picking seasons.
Technically yes, but it still isn't a quick fix. Seasonal and temporary workers still need other seasonal work or jobs that let them leave for seasonal work and need the capital investment to be able to travel for work and live at different farms. A single seasonal job paying good won't by itself get someone to invest into van-life, its maybe 2 months out of 12 and not entirely predictable work/profit just from yield variability. And most modern jobs don't let someone leave for weeks at a time to work elsewhere, atleast not any that are near the price range of basic physical labor.
You also lose a significant amount of productivity from first-timers in any process, and other full-time jobs taking away your expe
Higher wages means higher prices. At a certain point your price is uncompetitive with imports. You can use tariffs to protect a local product against an imported one, but that would require a competent leader who doesn't get emotional and declare a war (bomb-based or trade-based) when his feelings are hurt
Depends on the staffing issue, but many cant be solved by raising wages without going out of business.
Not every industry has tech level profits.
Was one of them Del Monte? They made a bad bet about consumption patterns from COVID persisting, but canned fruit demand didn't stay high, if I understand correctly.
I was told if we kill people in the streets and create concentration camps to put everyone suspected of being an immigrant in (even if they have legal papers, bc hey those can be fake who knows when your Prez thinks voting is fake) and send every immigrant back then Americans would be wealthy and prosperous and you're saying that's not the case in a country that's had extremely low unemployment for almost 15 straight years (excepting COVID)?
Trees?
Grand-post doesn't specify what kind of fruit the region their parents live in specializes in, and plenty of fruit grows on trees (citrus, stone fruit and apples leap immediately to mind).
And I know that some Washington apple packing and Florida citrus packing companies have declared bankruptcy in the past year, so those would be my guesses.
If you have to argue about nomenclature then your argument is probably not worthwhile.
Yes, fruit grows on trees. Did you assume the comment was necessarily about grapes?
While technically incorrect, tree is informally used to describe grape vines in some regions. Similar to “tomato plants” which is a more common example.
> not just the trade war
I just got back from Italy where I bought several cases and large formats of wine that, even after shipping, cost less than the non-plutocratic greats from California. Wildly, I got charged zero duties. Not even MVN. (I suspect it’s because I’m in a red state.)
Given how much of American farming went hard MAGA, it’s really difficult to feel compassionate for their struggles. Maybe after bankruptcy the new owners will be better.
Good. Let this nasty industry and its parasites die.
Let's just say it as it is... Wine is 'supposedly' an acquired taste but for most, it tastes bitter and not enjoyable for the cost. Tastes shift and luxury items from yesteryear no longer makes a strong statement about affluence to this generation.
I don't think you'll have several thousand years of people enjoying wine and then suddenly one generation decides that "wait this doesn't even taste good?".
I really like wine, and a $8.50 bottle of good quality French bubbles isn't a luxury good or a status symbol it's just life.
But it's definitely acquired - and the fewer that acquire that taste, the less you'll sell. And people I guess often establish that taste in the 20-30 year age, and if people go out less and drink less, perhaps they'll not grow up to be wine-drinking 50 year olds?
I think beer is even more of an acquired taste, but it doesn't stop the breweries from outselling the wineries.
> it tastes bitter and not enjoyable
Clearly haven't tasted Eiswein[1]. That said, can be too sweet for my tastes.
I'm not a wine drinker but when eating with work we usually get the wine menu, and a good wine pairing really can elevate it I find
But yeah casual drinking is not for me.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_wine
I think it just depends on what you like. I am not a big fan or most red wines (though some are good) and they give me headaches, but many chilled white wines I can drink like water.
Bitter? I’ve never found that with wine. Definitely beer is quite bitter, and coffee can be too. I find wine has more like a sour flavour.
> it tastes bitter and not enjoyable
Try a sweet wine, or if that's still too bitter, try a dessert wine. Wine has a huge range of sweetness.
> Wine has a huge range
Yeah, that's another problem with wine. Too many options and you never know what to expect.
Learning the basics is fairly easy and many people find the process to be quite enjoyable...
Sour is the word they were going for I think. Wine isn't bitter IME.
Acrid is probably the word they were looking for. Wine isn't sour.
It could be that my affinity for port & madeira biases me, but the wine-haters I know have all expressed a strong dislike of what they described as its "acidity".
I like the sentiment but wine has been made for thousands of years, with famous stories of kings and emperors enjoying them.
https://wineinstitute.org/press-releases/one-year-later/
https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/commodities/wine-related-produ...
- Tariffs so less international demand for US wine
- Canadian boycots of US products due to tariff wars
- Boomer wine buyers dying off
- younger generations drinking less overall and being less into wine
- everyone on GLP-1s drinking less
> - Tariffs so less international demand for US wine > - Canadian boycots of US products due to tariff wars
The tariff wars and "boycott US wine" goes way beyond Canada. I (in Europe) completely stopped buying US wine during this admin. Polls support this.
- Legal pot
- The economy
???
THC has never been an alternative to alcohol. There are definitely people who prefer it instead of alcohol and there are people who use both.
I don't know anyone who thinks they're interchangeable unless they're solely looking at it as a political/functional slot to fill.
If you force a drunk who hates pot to switch and vice-versa, they genuinely might want to murder you, but why make this a wedge issue?
I believe they mean having alternative choices in what one can legally consume to get high/drunk/etc. Anecdotally I know a few folks who went from illegal pot in high school to wine as adults because it is more socially acceptable, then back to pot when legal.
I don't know any pot smoker who ever gave a flying crap if it was legal. Let's not whitewash the past. It became legal for a reason.
If you feel this way about pot, have you not also considered that similar already occurred with alcohol roughly a century ago (in the USA)? Why do you think cops avoid overpolicing bars when they'd be entirely in their right to do so?
Personal use of drugs is the clearest example in all of criminal justice where people of all beliefs have to admit there really is a much bigger and widespread mental health problem at the root of it. This is very very far from a new topic. There's nothing special about pot.
> I don't know any pot smoker who ever gave a flying crap if it was legal.
I know plenty.
Generally they fit the pattern of being familiar with it from exposure a few times as teenagers or such and liked it, but it wasn't a big enough deal for them to want to find and maintain a relationship with a drug dealer, concerns that if they pulled it out at a party it might lead to consequences within their social or professional circle, etc.
I don’t know what GP is smoking. Most people do not maintain a relationship with a drug dealer. Legal access available from a convenient store front unlocks plenty of users who did not want the legal risk or hassle.
The biggest case you can follow is Canada. Even wine-drinking elderly sometimes switch to cannabis, due to lessened hangovers. Also, removing the friction is a huge boost to basically any industry.
Edibles/beverages are widely available now. Previously you'd have to purchase flower on the black market then use your home kitchen (which could be shared with your parents) to decarb and infuse it.
Maybe don't just think about pot smokers.
Sorry, but what way do you think I feel about pot? I was just providing anecdotal examples to explain the reasoning of why pot being legal could have an impact on demand for wine. It’s just a demand curve relationship, not my personal opinions on the legality of pot.
For the pot smokers who care about legality, it does matter for folks who have to take drug tests for their jobs. Several of my good friends stopped using it when that was a concern.
I happily smoke pot while illegal if it happens to be around and someone else provided it and I don't have to drive that day or do anything the next day. I chipped in or did favors not to be a mooch but never bought it directly myself, nor posessed any. None in my car, my house etc.
So that means very infrequently. Depends how many and what kinds of parties I found myself at that year.
I totally like it, will not hesitate if conditions are right, and the only reason I stayed away not doing any more than that was it wasn't worth the risk.
Even today I don't risk it because sometimes I drive across many state lines and I don't want to worry about keeping track of where I might possibly get in trouble if I piss off a cop at a traffic stop, which I am likely to do.
I don't think it's so crazy that there are pot smokers that can take it or leave it. Merely, you would probably never have realized I was a pot smoker, because I don't talk about it all the time for no reason, or even think about it. We'd have to be not merely aquaintances, but we'd have to sometime be at the same party at the same time with the other conditions met. You can't count these people that you have no way to know to count.
There absolutely is a contingent of "wine mom" types who used to enjoy a glass of wine in the evenings but have transitioned to gummies or other edibles before bed.
I know several people who started drinking less and used pot more back when they were able to get their medical marijuana card. Now that it's legal here, I expect more people have done the same.
Not everyone is a hardcore binge drinker or an all-day-every-day pothead. There are lots of occasional-to-moderate users of both, and legalization of weed has increased availability for the casual user. There are many casual users nowadays who have never interacted with the illegal side of things, and never had a relationship with a dealer.
Weed is not a direct replacement for alcohol, but it can be a preferred alternative sometimes, for some people, and legalization has made that more attractive.
I think gummies are a superior (more pleasant, healthier, safer) social lubricant than alcohol and I’m sure I’m not alone
> I think gummies are a superior (more pleasant, healthier, safer) social lubricant than alcohol and I’m sure I’m not alone
Yes, exactly you're proving my point. You see this as a slot to fill and are making it a wedge issue.
I don't think anyone's making anything into a wedge issue in this discussion, except perhaps you.
Equivalent risk. No way is THC healthier than alcohol - both in moderation not at excess.
Then its a personal preference thing.
That's a pretty big claim. Alcohol's harm to major organs like the liver is pretty well known. What kind of harm does THC/CBD cause when consumed orally?
harm to major organs >> at high doses not at low doses but agree there is an increased risk to liver on alcohol.
Gummies put a cognitive burden. If you are smoking that puts a fair burden on the cardiovascular system. High dose THC run a risk of psychosis.
Look im not pro either I'm however not in this lala land of believing there isn't any negative effects of THC especially over time.
Alcohol poisoning is a thing. I have yet to hear of a case of canabanoid poisoning. Canabanoids also don't lower your inhibition, which is why DUIs went down in states that legalized. The difference in risk could not be more stark.
I said in moderation please read my comments.
I did. Cannabis in excess has not shown to be harmful.
There are definitely people who prefer it instead of alcohol
Consider that these people may not want to break the law or didn't know what their preference until they were legally able to try it.
Before it was legalized people went down to the 7-11 to buy beer/wine all legal, maybe a bum to steer around.
They didn't want to get to know scuzzy dudes selling pot or driving to areas of town where at night they have street takeovers to score some pot.
Now those scaredy cats have legal dispensaries from which to obtain their MJ legally. So they might opt for pot these days.
> Canadian boycots of US products due to tariff wars
Not just Canada
> - Tariffs so less international demand for US wine
Why's this?
I feel like this is a trolling question. Demand for US exports has never been lower in recent history.
Feelings aside, I was just asking a question because I didn't understand the link.
Countries other than the US have, for reasons that you may choose to find mysterious, imposed tariffs on products exported from the US.
Tariffs raise the consumer-visible price of those goods. This then, due to demand elasticity, causes consumers in those non-US countries to buy fewer of those products.
Some impact may be badwill as well but quite a bit is first-order impact of second-order tariffs.
That seems odd since the EU lowered tariffs on US ag products. They also took back some previous retaliatory tariffs that were in place.
In 2024 (pre-trade-war), the US exported $168M of wine to the EU and $460M to Canada. Any recovery in wine exports to the EU won’t make up for Canadian boycotts.
Numbers for importing California wines went from $540 million, to $40 million in 3, 5 years. For one province alone. And this wasn't a federal decision, this was people telling their provincial government to do it. And they listened.
I’m in the US, and won’t buy booze from red states. I’m really getting to know our local (and also Scottish / Irish) distilleries.
I don’t imagine I’d buy any American imports if I was overseas.
Question: what is the ratio of US wine imported into the EU vs US wine imported into Canada, by dollar value?
Question: what is the percentage increase in tariff amounts on wine between the pre- and post-USMCA state of play between the US and Canada?
Sometimes seeing why something has happened requires considering wider context, which is why it's usually good for a nation to ensure primary education includes solid economics, history, media literacy, etc curricula.
I'll give my own personal reasons, our interest rates were going down.. Trump decides to start a trade war, then the central banks get a bit worried, then Trump decides to go to war with Iran.. now the central banks are increasing interest rates, as the future is uncertain.
His whole rhetoric is America should make more stuff right... Well, we can certainly stop buying that stuff since the choices he's made have hurt us. I'd prefer to buy closer to home thanks.
Not the only one I'm guessing.
This is incorrect:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports
This graph isn't adjusted for inflation.
The trend is the same adjusting for inflation
https://www.macrotrends.net/3510/us-exports
I am from a 4th generation wine growing family from Germany, and we have the exact same issues here. There is a global oversupply of grapes and wines. A lot of people in my region are struggling, my family included. Some experienced growers estimate 5-10 years until it becomes better for growers.
The trade wars, which some commenters suggested as a reason, are adding not as much to it as you might assume. I personally thing that it is more of a generational shift of habits.
I've heard a lot of stuff like people don't WANT to drink anymore but I wonder if it's not so much people's perception of drinking changed as opposed to people are in social settings where drinking occurs less. Alcohol is an addictive substance and best way to get someone hooked is small, frequent events where drinks are consumed. Over time they consume more and more and seek out more places to drink (and socialize) as the hook sets in. Peer pressure also plays a big role here too.
Wondering with remote work, remote school, etc post covid if we are just seeing less hooks set and less peer pressure.
Because of years of trade war, American wine industry is taking a beating around the world and a lot of Australia, NZ, and South Africa is picking up that slack. Even niche producers like Chinese and Japanese wine industry are very quickly maturing into real home-grown industries. The biggest market for California has always been Asia, and it's been near impossible to stumble into Opus One the way you used to be able to in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, etc.
Old world has always been able to be flexible, eating these kinds of punches by pivoting into NA or brandy during gluts, and demand has less fluctuations. This contraction, like a lot of everything else happening in the US, maybe was already coming because of some trends overlapping, but policy threw gasoline onto a combustible and fragile situation.
Ok, so does this mean prices in the US will go down? I keep seeing stuff about countries shifting away from US goods but prices seem to continue to rise.
>Ok, so does this mean prices in the US will go down? I keep seeing stuff about countries shifting away from US goods but prices seem to continue to rise.
The actual answer is yes, at least when it comes to wine (although I will note that the trade war stuff is only part of the picture--it has certainly hurt a number of wineries that previously relied on exports, but the wine industry is experiencing a much broader downturn than just this).
Not all wine, of course, but some wine is indeed seeing prices drop. There have been some great deals to be had in the past few years in certain corners, both big and small. Costco has had increasingly good deals on wine lately and other large retailers are having more and more as well.
There's a lot of price stickiness with wine, with wineries not wanting to lower sticker prices (since price is closely tied to branding and market positioning), so there's also been this fascinating trend of wine increasingly being bulked out to online retailers that operate on a rotating flash sale model (companies like Last Bottle or Wine Access), or to third parties who relabel it and sell it under an NDA on the original brand. These segments of the market are only going to continue to grow in the coming years as the glut of wine continues.
Don't count on it.
Prices and costs generally increase as the quantity sold decreases.
If they're buying fewer bottles for example, bottles will cost them more per bottle.
And if they're "losing money on international sales", often times they'll try to recoup that elsewhere. Like jacking up their own prices in justification.
There was a time not too long ago that Napa wineries still had free tastings and cheap bottles. As demand went up, so did prices. As demand goes down prices also go up? This seems disconnected from the supply/demand curves we learned about in econ 101.
There's a reason those were all taught to you in a classroom setting. They're generalities.
The real world works much differently.
If you run a competitive business in Capitalist America, you need to keep up with inflation, taxes, and the status quo as well.
Econ 101 usually teaches a simplified model... Still my lower divs covered the relationships between scaling supply and costs. It really just depends on the market, sometimes you are amortizing a high capital cost over each unit sold, while other times you are paying high input costs that are directly related to your scale. Scarcity/abundance of inputs is another major factor.
Higher demand incentivizes more production, increasing supply which drives prices down. Demand increases only drive up prices if supply is constrained.
Very likely wine demand was not going up, and price increases were instead due to increasing costs and inflation.
Wine has the advantage that it keeps really well, and in some cases improves (becomes more valuable with age.)
So when demand softens it may be advantageous to hold back the excess rather than lower prices. Yes, there are cash flow issues when this approach gets out of hand, but financial interests can cover a lot of that as well.
> it keeps really well
Eh, not really true for the cheap end of the market. A lot of wine sold in supermarkets, for example, is meant to be consumed a couple of years after bottling, tops. And storage can be a significant problem.
Reportedly, last year ~10% of California vineyards were uprooted, some grapes like Pinot Noir production is down 30%. Growers are going to keep trimming until they get back into the black, or prices fall down far enough for consumers to come back, whichever happens first. And it's not going to be just CA, it will be NY, TX, WA, OR wineries too, all areas that had big capex expansion over the past 10 years.
You can see it happening in real-time, right this moment. Go to your local Costco wine section, look for the clearance markdowns where the price ends in $0.97. That means it's marked for clearance and won't be coming back, and there's some screaming deals right now.
Many wines are already well under $10/bottle. Plenty of cheap wines already, I don't think there's room for prices to go down much farther.
Even at $10/bottle, food is too expensive now for a lot of consumers to splurge on wine. I drink water with my meals almost exclusively now.
It's nothing to do with health concerns. It's the economy.
Companies will try to make up lost sales by serving American "whales", especially in a luxury good like wine. I would expect prices to rise here in the short term and then the market will decide whether that means those of us outside the 1% stretch our budgets to keep buying or turn to the cheaper options.
Kind of like the Super Bowl and other major sporting events. Normies can make that their "major trip" for the year but mostly they want to sell their multi-thousand dollar tickets to folks who will be at the next big thing the following month.
No
Who is giving you the idea that trade makes things more expensive?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
Is it just me or why don't people just eat the grapes?
Wine grapes aren’t good for eating. People buy big, sweet grapes with thin skins and no seeds … which is virtually the opposite of what grapes grown for winemaking are.
They don't taste the same as eating grapes.
dessert and wine sorts are different. Also, people eat much less grapes than they drink, though some could be turned into raisins, but it is again not that much.
Raisin grapes are a whole different thing, too. Wine and eating grapes don't make good raisins.
Have you seen the price of wine in Napa Valley? Crazy expensive. Ok to good wine in Europe is 5-10€.
10 EUR is quite the minimum in EU supermarkets for decent wine.
Under that, it's not poison, but very rarely good.
My pet theory is that the vast majority of people have dopamine tickling devices that they carry around in their pockets, so alcohol use is subconsciously understood as _an addition to_ the negative behavior most people are already engaging in daily. And, in addition to that, scrolling keeps you occupied when you might otherwise be bored enough to crack open a cold one.
In the UK at least gym membership is up, nights out with drinks are down.
My pet theory is alcohol helps when you are out socialising IRL, and the gym helps you look good on Instagram/TikTok/whatever.
Possibly to do with research showing that no amount of alcohol is healthy/beneficial and even small quantities are bad. I think overall this is a good thing for society: its one of the leading causes of death and destruction backed by a powerful Government lobby.
The only reason alcohol is still legal is the long societal history and how ingrained it has been into most cultures for such a long time.
If we "discovered" alcohol today and didn't have it before it would certainly be illegal, or at the very least doing anything drunk would be way more severe of a punishment.
There are much safer and less dangerous vices available nowadays, but the liquor industry doesn't want to let go.
Rather than criminalizing more substances we should legalize more to apply a uniform standard.
Very interesting how different the experiences can be from one continent to another. But then again, who cares for American wine (certainly not the Euros).
Coming from Europe I'm used to see that every vineyard makes their own wine. Seeing grapes become such a commodified thing is a bit weird, I must say. Buyers of these will probably by definition make blended wines, which are not really held in high regards. People who drink wine are usually quite demanding about their drink.
So yeah, I'm surprised the farmers just let go of their produce instead of making a wine themself, if they think the vintage is so great.
It is true tho that regular wine has been in decline; nobody (aka the younger folks) wants that Monsanto-flavored and sulfured wine anymore, so natural wine has been a big craze and also more funky flavours are swiftly taking ground. Sure, the quantities are different, for many reasons - having less money in the pocket being one of them.
> But then again, who cares for American wine (certainly not the Euros).
Which is of course its own interesting thing given that almost every European vineyards is grafted from American vines following the wine blight. Like the number of vineyards in Europe that aren't grafted from American vines can be counted on one hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight
Interestingly, the blight itself was introduced into Europe through importation of American vines.
American vines being the cause and the "cure".
America in a nutshell (or a wine analogy).
This is not particularly relevant to the wine. The rootstock may be from American vines, but the vines grafted on (and thus the grapes) are still European varieties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daktulosphaira_vitifoliae#Biol...
This organism is practically hacking the plant in a multiphase process. It is interesting how selection forces are working at every stage, hardening the hack.
> Coming from Europe I'm used to see that every vineyard makes their own wine.
This isn’t strictly true. Europe has négociants, who buy grapes from smaller growers to make wine from (to be fair, often alongside their own vineyard holdings).
> But then again, who cares for American wine (certainly not the Euros).
Huge fan of Old World wine here. With that said, the Americans are producing remarkable wines these days. For my palate, I enjoy Sonoma and Willamette Valley. Even tasted blind, top critics have preferred California to France — look up the Judgment of Paris!
> Buyers of these will probably by definition make blended wines, which are not really held in high regards. People who drink wine are usually quite demanding about their drink.
The highest regarded wines are blended. Bordeaux wine makers that have large estates may only use their harvests (still blending varietals from year to year), but many Burgundy wine makers will buy harvests from different parcels and blend. There are exceptions but that is not the norm.
That is true, the French (as opposed e.g. the Germans, they blend different varieties much less) in particular do this, and they do it well. So yes, strictly speaking these are blended wines as well. But seldomly any wine maker in France would buy them; it all comes from their own parcels, and these blends are well established flavor profiles. They know their own grapes and what they can do with it.
If you do really high volumes you buy, sure. But again, it's of no surprise if these manufacturers experience a decline of demand.
Actually that is one of the big criticisms of French wine, blends are regulated by the AOC system where as California is more free to experiment. but any gross generalization of American wine is probably wrong. Plenty of wineries blend, plenty don't. Doesn't take much looking to find wineries that make wine from only grapes they grow...
Having grown up in California, we thought the same for European wines. Why bother when they are no better than the local swill. Though I'm not sure how true your conjecture is as my family was in Amsterdam a few years ago and eating at a fancy french restaurant got talking to the sommelier and mentioned we now lived in Oregon which turned in to a conversation about Pinot Noirs of the Willamette valley. He knew all about them...
But more to the point, all the top french Champagne producers have large holdings and production in and around Napa. They probably care...
This comment is extremely ignorant across several of its statements. Ignore.
You clearly don't know anything about American wine but just want to spew stereotypes and ignorance.
> to sell grapes as demand for wine drops
So, is it due to the economy or health factors?
PS: The article is blocked in my country so could not read it
US news outlets are often blocked where I live too, but not this one. Here's what the articles says:
There are a variety of forces driving the decline in wine sales. Baby boomers are aging out of the market while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns. Wine faces competition from craft beer, liquor and canned cocktails as well as cannabis.
“The kids just aren’t drinking as much,” Berryhill said. “And it’s not just wine, it’s whiskey and beer and everything. And then you’ve also got the competition with all the seltzers.”
Tariffs have reduced exports, particularly to Canada, which was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.
Firefox has a built in VPN now... give it a try.
> health factors
A lot of people are on ozempic and similar drugs nowadays, isn’t some of the side effects a reduction in cravings (alcohol, nicotine etc) ?
oh neat, another pakistani on hackernews
Yo!
There are a few others
Cannabis use is the reason. Daily cannabis use has surpassed daily alcohol use in the US. Add on that it's generally perceived as not as bad for you. Finally the population brought up drinking is dying off.
The mention of generations not drinking just seems like the standard nonsense you see on stuff like this where businesses want any excuse but the price of the end product.
A lot of places in the world are going through huge increases in cost of living, their choice of alcohol is going to be a cheaper buzz as a result, not expensive ‘prestige’ alcohols
Consumption of cheap alcohol is going down too and we can see the same trend among young people even in countries experiencing decreases in CoL.
They’re separate things though. While there might be a decline generally in alcohol consumption, that doesn’t mean it’s specifically why they can’t sell the wine. Of the reduced amount of alcohol being sold, the % going to wine will be even smaller because it is more expensive
Wine is or can be near the bottom in terms of doller per alcohol. It's just become a bit old fashioned.
My pet explanation is the transition to a knowledge-based economy. You might be ok laying bricks or pulling levers while nursing a slight hangover, but you can't stare into a screen or keep hold of a complex coding flow.
Maybe the AI revolution will "help" in that area too...
To be fair, American wine, probably undeservedly, doesn’t seem to have much appeal in Europe. There’s still a strong perception that wine should be either French or Italian, and anything else tends to be (again undeservedly) frowned upon.
I've always been around American wines and I can assure you it's fairly well-deserved. The quality in (even "high-end") American wine just simply is not there. The same can be said for their whiskey.
I'd characterize it differently - america makes lots of medicore wine and whiskey, but it also makes some fantastic wine and whiskey - my problem has always been that the good stuff in the US is stupidly overpriced why pay 2x-3x+ for an american bottle of wine when you can have one of similar quality for a fraction of the price from south africa, spain, france, germany etc.
>The same can be said for their whiskey.
Fine if you're not a fan of American whiskies or bourbon but it's a strange take to generalize it all as low quality..
For the most part it's not "bad", there's even some pretty good options, but nothing I'd describe as "premium". Americans have this strange affinity for additives, and it's not hard to tell in the final product.
IMHO it's not an affinity as much as fearlessness.
Maybe you're operating at a higher price bracket, but in Finland 10 euro bottles of Barefoot are pretty popular.
American wine does absolutely terribly in Europe in every situation except blind taste tests.
I mean, if I were European, I'd be avoiding American products wherever possible right now.
I was at an engagement party of some in-laws over the weekend: people getting married in their mid-twenties. The alcohol selection was mimosas (low gravity champagne mixed with juice) as well as Coors Light, which few people drank. Nothing at 5% or greater and no red wine. The younger people were there and gone in about an hour. So what little was served wasn't anything that people could get a buzz from while many of the middle aged adults have started to abstain.
Late 30s. Used to drink a fair amount of wine/beer. I Drink a lot less now.
- Getting older, it affects me for longer. I don’t want to write off feeling tip top the next day. Too high a price to pay. - I try and train (exercise) hard most days - I can’t train anywhere near as well after alcohol. - Kids - when you’re trying to fit work, hobbies, training, learning / self development and kids / family in, there’s not much room for slack. (Which could be considered a bad situation in itself…)
Has just become not worth it regularly. Fortnightly binges work better!
Opposite for me. Late 30s but I drink more or the same.
But I don't drink my go-to Zinfandel anymore as it has a big ass flag printed on the box. It's embarrassing feeling the cashier's judgemental gaze. They know I'm a drunk of course but I don't want them thinking I support the US
Tell the wine makers to stop putting that flag on there and maybe exports may pick up again
America’s obsession with their flag is now seen as nationalism on the outside. I always ask to imagine Germans putting their massive flag absolutely everywhere possible and how would that make everyone else feel.
Brand USA was hip during the Obama years.
Binges are substantially worse for you, though, than that same amount spread out in time
Yep fully appreciate that , being slightly glib- it’s probably a fraction of what it would have been spread out though, and probably feels like more of a binge due to infrequency / age than it actually is!
Corresponding jump in life expectancy and decrease in liver cancer coming in the next decade or so I imagine.
Good to hear. Sad we weren't able to regulate alchohol out of existence but maybe Gen Z can kill a lot of it off.
Napa used to be covered in peach orchards until it became clear that grapes were much more profitable. The trees were cleared to make way for vineyards.
The next profitable use of land will show itself soon enough.
You. Yes you, alcohol-consuming Californian. Go buy some grapes whilst they're cheap and make some wine.
I barely drink these days, but wine production is great fun and pretty damn easy. I've done it a couple of times, it was super rewarding.
It's much more straightforward than most booze (e.g., beer). You just need clean gear and mashed up grapes, and some sulphites on hand if things get a bit wonky. There's very little else to it.
I think anyone who drinks should make wine once in their life.
As a homebrewer, this is a comment I was expecting to see. Barley prices skyrocketed in 2021 due to increased demand (COVID) and geopolitical turmoil (One major European barley producers happened to invade another). These increased prices along with the quality jump in American beers (and becoming a father) reduced my interest in brewing, but it's still a hobby I revere.
Grape sales to hobbyists won't save the industry, but it could diversify the market slightly. Home winemaking is obviously less efficient than manufacturing, but when the supply must be liquidated that becomes a feature instead of a bug.
I would pay a premium to buy actual wine grapes instead of the boring green spheres that usually show up in the grocery store
I don't mean to dismiss wine as something people can appreciate almost like art, but sometimes the pricing does feel a little absurd.
I once had a red from Franciscan, made from a vineyard right next to Opus One. To me it tasted remarkably similar, yet it cost more than 30x less.
There are taste difference, brand prestige and story differences, and scarcity. The most extreme examples of this would be in burgundy where laws from a few hundred years ago ranked the value of very small and fractured plots of land and it’s been memed into the best wine in the world so you have the prestige of this ancient law, the scarcity of these small plots built in, and a region that is good but not my favorite selling the most expensive wine in the world.
Things are certainly changing. My son lives in a flat of 5 male University engineering students in the UK. None of them drink much alcohol at all. They don't even drink tea or coffee. Very different from when I was at University in the 80s.
When I was in my early 20s, I had a “moment of lucidity” where I, while drunk, looked around at all my other drunk friends and couldn’t help but think: this is a huge waste of time, and I’m going to feel awful tomorrow. A few weeks later, I stopped drinking entirely.
Some of those friends disappeared almost immediately. The only thing we really had in common, after all, was drinking together. But what was most notable was that, within a few short years, the vast majority of that group of friends was stone-cold sober.
I’m now in my mid-to-late 30s, and I don’t have a single friend who drinks anymore. My wife and I never started drinking again, and we’ve even seen some of our older family members stop drinking too.
At least in my anecdotal experience and within my bubble, it’s becoming increasingly normalised to be sober. When I quit drinking, people questioned the decision, asked me if I had a problem, and were generally quite hostile the idea. When my sister-in-law quit drinking last year however, people celebrated the decision.
Times are certainly changing.
Sidenote: the amount of money I have saved by not drinking is astounding. I mostly funnel anything I don't spend into index funds and the returns have been staggering.
I had that moment while puking up my nth beer, wtf was I paying all that money for this?!
When I was in college, that's also what I told my parents.
LOL. I have reason to believe he is being honest.
It's amazing to me how everyone is so sure of their pet theories. Young people are socializing less! It's GLP-1s! Pot is pushing out wine! Or is it craft beer! Or liquor! Or Covid made us all drink less!
How hard is it to say you just don't know? The reason we have researchers and sociologists examine this stuff is to look at actual data and come to a better conclusion than rando Internet person that pulled it out of their ass.
You see, I am a prime l33tcoder, now system designer, now LLM harnesser. I breathe first principles.
I am very smart.
https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/
Looking at the current state of politics, it's basically impossible for most people. Even agnosticism is not that widespread, and that's a known position. It's not even that with most topics.
The people commenting are also consumers, as are their families and friends.
So anybody may have their own take from their experience of what's happening.
I myself drink much less wine as is my inner circle so I have an opinion.
One weird thing when living in the US is how hard it is to find pure grape juice - it is usually not something sold in supermarkets like orange or apple juice is. In the remainder of the west world this is not the case and normally it replaces the role cranberry juice has in the US.
Where in the US do you live? I've lived in Florida and Chicago and every supermarket sells 100% grape juice. Costco too. Welch's and Kedem are the two big brands. There's also grape-flavored "100% juice" that's primarily apple and pear juice with grape flavoring, but the actual grape juice is on the shelf next to it.
I wonder if the industry can shift towards production foods. Grapes are high in sugar which has value to the food industry. We have a concord grapevine at my house that produces 10-15 gallons of fruit a year and we use the grapes to supplement other meals and create fruit roll up preserves.
Wasn't SGMA always the big long term problem for them anyway? I recall reading some time ago many are looking to pivot to solar farms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Groundwater_Manage...
I know a duck who might be willing to buy some.
I wonder if clickbait / online entertainment is replacing booze as the opiate of the masses? People have mentioned weed but I see few stoners and like 90% of people staring at screens.
They can sell them to me instead, I could be eating grapes all year long.
Most grapes good for winemaking are not good for eating. (And vice versa.)
This is being repeated over and over again on this page, but it's factually untrue… I've tasted dozens of kinds of wine grapes, and lots are tasty or at least as palatable as some of the blander table grapes – some are even widely recognized as such (muscat!). Also, even varieties that are not great for eating can often be used to produce some very nice juice – cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay are all used for high-end, monovarietal grape juices in France for instance.
"Eating" grapes are mostly not optimized for eating, they are optimized for shipping and lifetime at the supermarket. Wine grapes taste great, but don't travel well (and have bigger seeds, smaller fruit, etc.). American supermarkets sell mostly seedless grapes, which don't taste great, but are easy to eat and to give to kids.
Not in my experience. The best eating grapes are wine grapes by far.
I was thinking the same thing. Why not just sell the grapes straight to us grape loving people? They do have a short shelf life though, and as a lover of concord grapes I do go bananas during concord grape season but I really can only eat so many before they start to spoil and I do eat large amounts of them. The concord grape dealers know me and flag me down to give me deals.
About 10 years ago I realized how much I was spending on red wine and decided to stop and put that money into helping pay off the house.
In my area there are lots of wine growers who are adding bubbles and canning their wine. It is way better, sweeter, still tastes like wine.
Not sure how the extra supply for grapes affect retail prices of grapes for regular consumption. But at Costco in Southern CA, the price of grapes have been fairly stable (~$5.99 - $7.99) over the last year or a little more.
California’s wine grapes (vitis vinifera) aren’t suitable for eating. Some varieties (vitis labrusca) can be used for table grapes or wine grapes, but those aren’t really grown in California.
Everyone says this, but here's a sample of size 1: some years ago I was at a Sonoma winery during harvest season, reached my hand through a fence, grabbed a bunch of grapes and ate them. They were delicious.
Did I just get lucky? Anyone else do this?
The issues are they likely have seeds, might not travel or store as well, and are smaller than consumers are used to. There's also already a supply of table grapes you'd be competing with. To your experience, if they're ripe, they'll taste sweet and grapey. They're not that different.
They taste so different than the grapes in the grocery store they might as well be a different fruit entirely imo. So much better. Sweeter. Berry or stone fruit like. Almost floral. The vintners are seriously holding out on us. Yes there are seeds, but that is the price you pay for the finest grape you will ever feast upon. You go back to a store bought "red seedless" it taste like a sad old cantaloupe in comparison.
I mean that's the case with basically every fruit. The modern variants are larger, shelf-able for longer, while the older ones are smaller, but taste way better.
I've eaten wine grapes and while they taste... winey? I also quite like them
Labrusca makes terrible wine, it's too foxy. There are some hybrid varieties that make okay wine.
Vinifera makes a perfectly fine table grape and grape juice, depending on the varietal.
For example, Thompson Seedless, an incredibly common table grape, is vinifera.
The varieties used for win are generally not good for eating and vice versa. Not universally so but generally.
Are there industry forecasts that predicted (or didn’t) this? I wonder how volatile the market is, and how much risk the growers thought they were taking.
wait...the millenials are not just buying houses anymore but also drinking less wine?
is it possible to pivot? maybe make grape juice or associated products like jam/jelly etc, or go a bit further on the alcohol side and either make vinegar or maybe even ethanol (is ethanol fuel blending still a thing in the US?)
Wine grapes are really only good for making wine.
I meet a lot of parents who say "I never drink" but then say they pound THC gummies.
That seems completely reasonable. Nobody who's laid out on THC wants to run me over with their car while I'm on my bicycle.
I noticed Trader Joes was selling champagne grapes the other day. Things must be really, exceptionally grim. France has been stockpiling wine in state owned warehouses (to keep it off the market) and paying farmers to tear up their vineyards.
Well you've just tarriff-banned Canadian alcohol from your country so that should help your sales
It’s amazing how much more land in the central coast area is now dedicated to growing grapes.
The trend is said to be declining wine- and alcohol consumption in general. But tariffs and US-Canada relations are also mentioned.
For my part, I loved a few Californian wines, but ever since Trump threatened to invade my country, I haven't bought a single bottle, and I never will.
I think that mirrors others here, those bottles seem to be going out of rotation entirely - and we generally mark whether a product comes from inside the EU now. Which, curiously, started when relations went sour.
I stopped buying my once in a while bottle since wine prices are crazy high, like 30-50 for a standard bottle now at my local store
Not worth it to me at least
Article fails to note that the 2010s saw abnormally high per capita wine consumption, and even after the 20% decline in the 2020s to date, per capita consumption is still more than 50% above historical baseline. This isn't the death of a once stable industry, this is a predictable bursting of an obvious bubble.
Seems like the craft beer and cocktail scene is really eating into wine's market share these days. Tough pivot for growers.
There is no reason to drink. It’s literally poison. And I feel in recent decades people have become more obsessed with chasing fitness and health that abstaining from alcohol is very chic.
Using it as a “social lubricant” is a lame excuse, it makes you an imposter giving a false representation of your true personality that people would actually interact with day to day. When the tide goes out, we’ll see who was swimming naked.
Is Californian wine a thing?
The US is the #4 wine producing nation in the world, with over 80% of American wine being produced in California, so yes, Californian wine is very much a thing.
Yes
GLP-1 is hitting alcohol sales
I find it odd that people don't complain about all the water these guys use, but apparently data centers are the Great Satan.
You find it odd that people complain less about water being used for agriculture?
If demand is down globally, sell the land already. People will do everything except the hardest thing.
If you sell the land the rip up the vines, you've destroyed the winegrowing capacity.
That's fine if you believe this is a long-term trend and creative destruction needs to replace it with something. Maybe it will even be more economically productive than a strip mall or a subdivision. (Maybe...)
That's less fine if you think this is due to temporary fluctuations in demands, such as say decreased demand of american goods due to either economic status or perception of american goods in global markets. That framing is one where some stupid national-level moves may have destroyed or consolidated american economic might. And whether consolidation is the same thing as destruction, it at least decreases competition and increases mediocrity, which reading between the lines on your tone is something I suspect you in theory might support.
The decrease in consumption predates the current trade issues. Peak domestic wine consumption was in 2021 and has been falling rapidly ever since. There hasn't been a decrease in demand of this magnitude or duration since the 80s. Despite several years of declining consumption, per capita consumption remains over 50 percent above historical baseline. Combined with demographic changes that will decrease avid wine consumers as a fraction of the population, it's quite clear that the 2010s bubble was the short term abnormality.
People generally do find that the hardest thing to do is ... the hardest thing. You might say that this is a tautology.
And do what with it?
Wine? Who needs wine to market grapes?
* Grapes are great snacks
* Grape juice is tasty (and you dilute it if it's too sweet)
When they're available, I buy both, quite frequently. I don't like alcohol though - never developed a taste for it; so, no wine for me.
Certainly not declining consumer spending. Couldn't be that
About time really, living in the Western Cape in South Africa (similar climate to California) and its mind blowing how much of the best most productive land is used for wine production. With some of the highest fetal alcohol rates in the world, cheapest alcohol and most dangerous roads due to drink driving it's time we take a hard look at whether it is worth it as a society. Farm workers in these areas can't afford nutritious food because the best land is used for producing wine for export mostly to benefit foreign land owners (here's looking at you Richard Branson, etc) instead of growing food...seems pretty crazy really.
South Africa is big, really big. That small sliver of land you see devoted to wine farming is not the reason they can't afford nutritious food. But it does provide those farm workers with a good income relative to other farm industries in South Africa (their wages and benefits tend to be better).
If you’re a domestic US wine lover, now is a great time to be buying if you have the space to store it.
:D
That said, American wine—and California wine in particular—has a bit of an IPA problem inasmuch as there is a lot of overpriced, overproduced swill being priced exceptionally high by international standards.
Not just American wine... wines from any region have always been more expensive in the US.
Quick poking around Google... Italy, France, and Germany all have mid-tier bottles of their own domestic wine for far less than we (in the US) get any wine, domestic or import.
I spent a month in Italy and drank many fine wines. The most expensive sold at supermarket was 15 euo. Most were like 6.
Have you bought wine at Trader Joe's? It used to be famous for its "2 buck chuck" aka Charles Shaw. And many other well-regarded wines for under $10.
I have, and their prices have gone up. Their reserve wines are $20 now. Still a good buy for bottles that are usually very drinkable. Bit similar wine in Italy would still be about half that price.
It is incredibly difficult to sustainably run a winery in California. The margins are often negative without operating at a large scale, which is part of why the industry has consolidated heavily over the past few decades.
Often times, wealthy people buy wineries as a hobby to dabble in, but end up selling and calling it a day before it drains their cash. If you want to buy wine for cheap that is made in California, buy mass-market wine.
Smaller brands are generally expensive because that price is necessary to sustain operations, but most of the time that fails, and the owners end up selling.
I get the swill at a discount :) "The best wine is the wine you like best." Best deal I recently got was a few hundred bottles for under $1k, <$5/bottle. Easier than the trek to a Trader Joe's or Costco, ymmv (and I don't feel bad throwing a bottle out if it isn't for me, versus a $100+ bottle).
Sounds like a great deal, but that’s quite a lot of space required to store them, no?
'a lot' depends on how much you had to begin with.
Not really, takes up a large wall in a residential detached single family home basement somewhere in the Midwest. Everything is relative.
Don’t even need that. If they’re packed in wine boxes they take up hardly any space.
You allowed to do that? You'd at least have to tip the box on its side if storing for a long time now? I'm no sommelier but I hear the cork needs to stay wet or they'll spoil.
The bottles I've received are in large boxes that hold ~20 bottles each, delivered via Fedex. Each box goes in a spot on industrial shelving, and is cataloged into an inventory system when received.
Do you just buy barrels at that point?
Large-format bottles are criminally underappreciated this side of the Atlantic.
Only one so far, I'm willing to take more but not a lot on offer. Maybe I'm talking to the wrong suppliers. There's a right price for everything, but I am looking for fire sale|"going out of business" prices. Replies with leads welcome!
I feel for the wine growers, but as an avid wine consumer I'm looking forward to better deals.
...and less variety. Growers are not going to stay in business by lowering their prices.
I haven't noticed any retail wine prices stabilizing or decreasing, at least in the Bay Area. Napa wines are still exorbitantly priced, and imports are way the fuck more expensive due to tariffs.
On a pure price-performance basis it is difficult to justify buying US domestic wine over French imports. The quality of the latter is consistently higher at reasonable price points. California wines haven’t justified their price tag for a long time on average.
I collect burgundy .. mainly romanee conti .. and this article rings very true ..
i'm based in London .. and at places like Harrods / Hedonism Wines .. iv seen a bottle of romanee go from around £20k to £15k .. and sometimes £10 12k .. this year ..
At the same time cuban cigars ,, which are also something I collect/smoke .. seem to be going in completely the opposite direction and getting more expensive .. because of Venezuela/oil/embargoes .. so .. for once .. the wine market is giving me the better deal
I’ll believe it when wine prices go down. Prove it!
Yeah, maybe if a bottle of crappy wine is less than $30, people will buy it.
Great. Maybe we can do something productive with that land now.
I cut back drinking considerably because of how it affects my sleep. That, by itself, is the biggest thing for me. Even just one drink over a weekend lunch/brunch can disrupt my sleep later that night.
That said, when I look at the wider trend it seems obvious that "it's the economy, stupid" as are so many other wider trends. It's now commonplace in my city (one of the lowest CoL in the US) for a typical bar to charge $18-$22 for a cocktail and $9-$12 for a beer. Consider that the minimum wage here is still $7.25/hr and the average wage in the city is just $26.44/hr, and with the rise in cost of everything shrinking discretionary spending budgets, it's a big ask to expect someone to spend close to an hours labor for every single drink of an evening. There's obviously generational aspects as well, but how much of that is sociocultural vs economic? Gen Z is broke as a joke, they're not spending on booze when they can barely make rent and utilities.
I would expect Californian wine to be overpriced, as most things are there. That could also be a factor. If your local wine costs as much as a nice imported Spanish Rioja, why would anyone pick the local wine?
Californian wine can be $400 a bottle or $4 a bottle.
Unsurprising. As a US-based wine drinker, California wine feels overpriced and inferior to European imports. Add in Huberman convincing Gen Z that all alcohol is harmful, and the trend makes complete sense.
Over and over I'm seeing markets collapse for products that gradually got more expensive over decades and then folks on the sell side surprised when the market is gone rather than just capped at some price.
Commercial real estate is the same, it got so expensive with such a bad experience for people using it that folks discovered they don't need it.
You can't have a market for alcoholic beverages when the default cost is 2 or more hours of minimum wage work.
So the war on drugs has finally borne fruit?
This is reminiscent of 90s Japan. Whisky consumption dropped during the economic hard times. Whisky manufacturers were forced to scale back production because of it. When demand came roaring back in the 2010s, they had no whisky to sell and a decade long runway to get production restarted. Whisky doesn't happen overnight. It's know as the Japanese Whisky Armageddon.
Can't they sell for ethanol?
Wine is also widespread for cooking or marinating.
It's the cost, having a glass or bottle of wine before was just like buying some cheese to take to a party, now it's something you have to think about that, pair that with a potential hangover and people just decide not to bother.
While I enjoy a glass of wine every now and then, I'm not going to lament the decline of an industry producing alcoholic products; it's inarguably good that younger generations are drinking less. Sorry to the farmers, but profiting off of increasing public health risk maybe should be a precarious business. I'm not gonna get upset about tobacco farms shutting down or having to switch crops, and alcohol is just another addictive and harmful substance (I've known more people who died due to alcohol than any other substance, one in a drunk driving accident, one due to liver failure, two were alcoholics who died by suicide...can't be certain it was the alcohol, but addiction certainly didn't help their situation).
But, also, the income of younger generations has been crushed so much, the ones that do still drink can't afford expensive luxury booze. Decent wine is an expensive way to drink alcohol.
Most money gets spent in over-65 cohort in any case simply because they have the most of it, and they love wine. Just make less of more expensive ones.
People are increasingly broke and have less leisure time to spend it drinking. I stopped drinking during the pandemic and have had maybe one drink a year since. Once you stop, you really don't miss it.
Three issues, all compounding on each other, cause this. Poor foresight, overproduction, changes in youth drinking, and too much focus on small vintners.
There is a gut after production was ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone saw the trend line jump and assumed it wasn't a century-level event but a new trend that would last forever. Vines take a few years to start producing, if you swap or plant new acres you don't see the grapes for ~5 years. Which is now!
The US wine industry has tried for years to get younger drinkers. There is a strong relationship: the younger someone starts, the more time their palate has to develop, and the more likely they are to regularly buy more expensive wines.
The issue is they suck at it and regularly shoot themselves in the foot. I've seen party buses with kegs at tastings, which get people there but barely connect them to wine. Wineries are far, expensive (oh my god, tasting fees. They used to be excited you drove to them. They'd pour you anything. Now it's 2-3 bottles worth of $$ to walk in the door), and have special "rules" and social cues. The barrier to entry is high, and the old people who currently spend the money like it that way. So the audience is aging out.
There are 400-600 individual wineries in Sonoma and Napa. Each. Paso isn't far behind. It's just too many. How do you even choose the 2-6 you go to on a day trip to try them out? Let alone remember them in stores. There won't be consolidation like in other industries, because the brands of all the small fish are so diluted it's not worth acquiring.
There is a saying that "the best way to turn a large fortune into a small fortune is to buy a winery." And holy hell, did a ton of people do that. These small wineries don't make a profit, its a hobby for dozens to hundreds of people. They want the status, even if it costs them. So the market doesn't have clear signals for production and how to self-limit.
The fourth reason is that wineries don't grow grapes anymore. The industry is split into growers and vintners. Growers can take care of large agg with scale. Makers can choose à la carte what grapes they want that year. It's not a bad system and has enabled most of the smaller-scale wineries to launch without going totally bankrupt.
But now there are bag holders, and no one to buy their wares. If growers go out of business, there are no grapes to buy. Since Trump came in, they have already had issues getting labor. Costs have gone up, and no practical automation is available.
I believe there are separate issues with youth drinking, mostly around the risk involved in being inebriated and having a conversation or action come back to haunt you. Kids today live in a panopticon like my age never did. I can't say that I would be willing to open up the same way in today's environment.
Gen-Z and GLP-1. This is great news. I hope people stop drinking and everyone producing alcohol has to find a new job. It would be a golden age.
In EU, quality wine prices went up 50% - 100% in the last five years.
I remember perfectly the prices of the same bottles - same brand. That's incredible.
And inexpensive wine is terrible.
They might be forced to... (gasp!)... sell wine before its time.
Boo. Fucking. Hoo.
What's happening is that consumers are paying more money for less value. So any business which produces real value is going to struggle to make a profit while fake businesses 'front companies' which produce nothing except lies are going to be making a lot of money. All the money is going to be captured by companies which control the customer relationship; I.e. media companies.
The global financial infrastructure is set up for this to happen.
It's like how they're trying to put protein in everything now. People are eating less meat and quality natural proteins and instead eating cheaper, low quality, synthesized proteins. Companies can slash production costs while branding it as 'healthy' and charge a premium... Let media brainwashing fill the gap and create the profit margin out of nothing. An extreme case I saw was cheese; the other day my wife bought some horrible cheese with '50% more protein' which tastes like plastic... Paid premium for it. I suspect the protein is from whey which is usually a waste byproduct from cheesemaking; they usually remove the stuff because it makes the cheese taste worse... But now they leave it in slap on a '50% more protein' and charge a premium for it. Then when you watch YouTube, you see all these food influencers using the word 'Protein' all the time when referring to beef or chicken... Brainwashing you into thinking that they are equivalent because they want to sell the cheap stuff to you through a different channel as a premium product!
As for synthetic proteins like beta-lactoglobulin which they feed animals to substitute whey powder (which they now simply leave in the cheese as discussed)... Guess what they use to produce these? Yeast + Sugar! Now you know why all the media has ganged up against sugar! Sugar is the new villain now because they don't want people eating it and drive up the price. They want sugar to be cheap so they can convert it to artificial proteins... Which can be sold directly at a premium.
Basically, the waste byproduct which used to go into animal feed is now fed to humans instead... And the animals we raise for meat now consume synthetic crap made from quality products that are being suppressed by the media.
And guess what; some of the new proteins and chemicals used to feed livestock are difficult and hazardous to produce and so the companies behind those have an oligopoly.
It's kind of insane how the entire economy turned into a pure manipulation play.
Anyway this is on a bit of a tangent from the topic of grapes and wine but the culprit is also media manipulation driven by the design of the financial and political system which produces and supports media monopolies.
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You realise to grow table grapes, you need to rip out the current vines you have right?
Wine grapes are rather nice to eat (at least the ones I've tried), but they're typically smaller than American table grapes I've experienced, but hey, sell them as heirloom varieties at Portland farmers markets maybe?
This is a totally different variety of grape compared to what they're setup to grow now.
I was thinking along the same vein, though - what about special varieties of grape juice?
It is objectively good if demand for alcohol goes down.
It's gonna be quite a lot of additional surplus, and, they already do this. Surplus wine grapes get sold to concentrate makers, however, it pays less than it costs to grow them because concentrate is basically a commodity sweetener competing with sugar, corn syrup, and apple concentrate. Bottled grape juice is a small and shrinking market, and in that market, most people expect Concord flavour (these aren't that), plus a lot of bottled juice is reconstituted from that same commodity concentrate anyway.
Yes! I don't drink alcohol but have gone wine tasting with friends and one vineyard had grape juice from some of their grapes and it was interesting and yummy.
An interesting variety of grape juices would be very cool.
NA grape soda made from wine varietals is a niche product you can find in some wine producing regions here in the US and usually fairly expensive for a soda. All of the ones I've tried are pretty tasty, tough!
Why put something on sale when it is selling just fine at the current rates?
I guess I am an outlier, I did not have any grapes until September, when Ontario grapes became available.
It did not feel right to buy murican grapes at full price in the middle of the summer.
simple: dry them into raisins, export.
for consumption as raisins? I think raisins come from a particular variety - wine grapes aren't even that good to eat fresh, I would guess they wouldn't make good raisins either.
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Please don't jeer like this on HN. Wine grape growers all over the world are experiencing similar declines in demand. The same thing is happening in Australia (I know people personally affected by it) and it has nothing to do with any flavor of political rule.
Please always observe the guidelines when participating here, which include avoiding political/ideological battle and off-topic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
How is this jeering? I'm pointing out important facts about one of the subjects in the story that weren't included. I didn't celebrate or express my opinion. Should I have worded it in a different way?
It does suck for everyone else who didn't vote for this and I feel for them.
You didn’t point out “important facts”; you’ve raised vague associations and extrapolated them in a way that seems damning. There’s no evidence I can find that this man or his family members support this federal administration or its policies. Most of them haven’t been public representatives for over a decade. The last one left office in 2018. And all of that still has absolutely nothing to do with the macro forces affecting demand and prices for wine grapes throughout the world.
> Should I have worded it in a different way?
You shouldn’t have raised it at all. It’s a weak, tangential point, almost completely substance-free, and is in clear breach of the guidelines. HN is only a place where people want to participate because most people try to make solid points, and avoid posting junk like this.
Even if that slippery slope logic were true, the vast vast vast majority of farmers in the country are some flavor of conservative. It would be hard to ignore all of them and also care about our food supply.
I think OP was more pointing out a supreme irony with the farmer demographic. They rely heavily on seasonal immigrant labor yet they voted for immigrants to be rounded up and forbidden to enter the US. Their sales rely on exports (e.g. soybeans) and imports (tractor parts, fertilizer) yet they voted for a complete upending of the global trade system that benefitted them. So that they are complaining about the current economic climate while simultaneously politically being fully behind it is schadenfreude for many.
This is an unhelpful generalization.
Both political parties are made up of constituent cohorts. All Republicans are not anti-immigrant, anti-trade junkies in the same way all Democrats are not anti-work socialists. I think you'll find farmers in particular are generally much more pro-trade and pro-immigrant than the rest of the party.
The story is these farmers voted for Trump despite him tilting against their best interest. But the reality is they probably put up with his views on immigration and trade hoping they would be more than offset by his views on land use and tax policy (and have been sorely mistaken).
I know that people really want to make schadenfreude out of this But when the shoe is on the other foot and Republicans make these same kind of ad hominem attacks they equally fall flat. No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
> these farmers voted for Trump despite him tilting against their best interest
There is a good amount of research that suggests people do not vote using reason, or necessarily consider their own best interests. Rather, it is suggested that most people who vote affiliate themselves with a political party that appeals to their interpretation of morality; and then they vote on tribal lines.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5120865/
> Rather, it is suggested that most people who vote affiliate themselves with a political party that appeals to their interpretation of morality
Well obviously, I rather have someone making decisions, that hurt me a bit, but are morally good, then someone who makes me a profit, but acts evil.
> (and have been sorely mistaken)
It's a little hard to feel bad for these people when they already saw how Trump didn't actually push their interests during his first term, and yet they voted for him again.
Meanwhile, the Project 2025 handbook was there for everyone to read, and Trump's rhetoric was based on cracking down on immigration (bye-bye, seasonal labor), beating up our trade partners (need to import farm tools? pay more!), and slashing federal government spending (haphazard and largely a failure to actually save money or tackle deficits or debt).
The 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act was a fine preview for more of the same in 2025, so I'm not sure what these voters were looking for when it comes to tax policy.
Land use is generally a state-level concern, so I'm not sure what they think Trump would be doing for them there.
You aren't going to escape the association with President Donald John Trump. He is the present and future of the Republican party.
I could buy it if we heard about reluctant Trump voters who don’t really like him and disagree with a bunch of his actions but reluctantly voted for him because they thought he was better than the alternative. This seems to be extremely rare, though. Maybe those voters just don’t get air time.
> because they thought he was better than the alternative
There has to be a large number of these? Or how do you explain voting him out and then back in?
His 2020 loss was all about turnout among the opposition. He got more votes than in 2016.
> All Republicans are not anti-immigrant, anti-trade junkies in the same way all Democrats are not anti-work socialists
Democrats are not anti-work socialists and never were. They never had rhetoric that would imply so. However, republicans do have anti-immigration, anti-trade rhetoric and politics.
> No, just because someone voted for Joe Biden doesn't make them a police-hating communist.
Of course, because Biden was not hating police and was not a communist. Republican party however is exactly what it is accused of being here. And Trump is its ruler and champion.
Same as UK farmers voting for Brexit whilst being beneficiaries of EU subsidies for farming.
Which policy related to Canada is affecting the grape business? I didn't see it referenced, and assumed that since it's being described as a trend over 3 years then it's not just about tariffs.
> Tariffs have reduced exports, particularly to Canada, which was the largest foreign buyer of American wine.
And it links to a Feb 2025 article titled "Canada Tariffs Paused, but California Wineries Fear a Trade Dispute Would Be Crushing"
https://www.kqed.org/news/12025404/canada-tariffs-paused-cal...
Us alcohol products unavailable in most of Canada. So there’s a fair bit of export gone missing. And European response is probably reducing demand for us product in favour of their own.
Ah, gotcha. I presume there's then substitution effects on both sides of the pond, but the US loses more on net from the Canadian shift from American to other wines.
This thread reminds me: I need to make a concord grape pie. It's the season for it.
An NA wine that wasn't completely horrible might ease the burden a bit.
Am I supposed to feel bad for the cancer juice people?
Everything about GenZ makes me nervous for their future.
The fact that they drink less makes you nervous for their future? Are you serious?
California grapes have no taste.
Sure they look big, round, juicy and shiny, but they are tasteless, so why would anyone buy them ?
People in my life just do not drink when we get together.
In many non-Anglo-Euro countries, drinking is seen as moderately aberrant behaviour akin to frequenting sex workers or doing drugs.
I remember that everyone would whisper about an uncle of mine who "drank".
The poor man had around 5 or 6 drinks a week and has a moderately successful career as a lawyer at my country's Supreme Court.
But he was still the one who "drank".
> In many non-Anglo-Euro countries, drinking is seen as moderately aberrant behaviour akin to frequenting sex workers or doing drugs.
That was your experience but is simply untrue as a generalization.
Arguably what is frowned upon is uncontrolled binge drinking and asocial behabiour of people who cannot hold a drink.
Wine and beer culture are still very much a part of social and family life in quite literally the whole of Europe.
>In many non-Anglo-Euro countries, drinking is seen as moderately aberrant behaviour akin to frequenting sex workers or doing drugs.
You've gotta give some examples here.
In the drugs loving country that is the USA, now more than 25% of households have someone taking some "ozempic" like drug for dealing with obesity.
The consequence is that the Homer Simpsons do not feel the need to drink alcohol anymore.
We created a system for measuring future trends for a food company and the trend of people avoiding sugars and alcohol is the strongest now.
For people outside the US to understand, you need to know that all foods in the US supermarkets are flooded with sugars in a way that is hard to comprehend unless you come from outside. You have the highest obesity levels in the world.
Those drugs have secondary effects but obesity has too, and they work very well.
There's just no compelling reason to use alcohol anymore.
It used to be a universal social lubricant, but now people stay home - the only people drinking in public are drunkards. Not a great look.
It used to be considered "healthy" to drink a bit. Twenty-one drinks a week was considered normal. Now we have decades of research meta-analysis concluding, in no uncertain terms, that the only safe amount of alcohol is zero. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/alcohol-is-the-root-of-62-dise...
Alcohol increases anxiety. Given the zeitgeist and state of the world, it's not surprising consumers want to avoid spiking their cortisol in the evenings.
Alcohol is expensive. The cost of living is going up and wages are not. The budget has to adjust somehow - alcohol is an obvious place to make cuts.
Alcohol prevents the body from metabolizing real food. Fat burning stops while the metabolism shifts to rid the body of the toxins you just dumped in. Aside from the health impacts, you're gonna see this directly in your gut circumference via visceral fat. Considering the GLP-1 trend, beer gut is out of fashion.
So for me personally, and anyone else paying attention, there is no reason to touch alcohol. It's strictly poison and has no valid role in a human diet. Sorry farmers - maybe switch to growing something that provides nutrition and isn't toxic?
You seem pretty entrenched in your opinion, but also note that loneliness and unhappiness are at record levels.
If alcohol is part of the solution to that, then it is certainly worth considering trade-offs. A lonely and miserable life is not one worth living
Agree that the loneliness epidemic is an issue. But why would alcohol be the solution? Sounds like you implicitly associate socialization with drinking.
Yes but if you look at, I dunno, the entire history of the human race, for some darn reason alcohol is strongly associated with socializing.
Maybe that's a coincidence though.
The vast majority of people on this planet are teetotal. I guess they never have and never will socialize /s
Needing alcohol to socialize is not normal (though it has been normalized by some cultures). If you need alcohol to have fun, that's a sign of a serious problem that requires professional help.
>The vast majority of people on this planet are teetotal.
A citation would be nice. The WHO seems to suggest this is incorrect: https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption
Your link is a visualization of the data in the 2018 WHO global status report on alcohol and health, which is the same data I used. Quoting directly from that paper:
> Some 2.3 billion people are current drinkers. Alcohol is consumed by more than half of the population in only three WHO regions – the Americas, Europe and Western Pacific.
Globally, the majority of people are non-drinkers. It's not even close. The maps obviously tell a different story on a per-country basis. And if you live in an area with a super-majority of drinkers - yeah it's going to feel like everyone in the world drinks. But the global data says otherwise.
edit: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241565639