Wine brands chase Gen Z with playful tie-ins to Shark Week, NASCAR and
more
[June 23, 2026] By
J.M. HIRSCH
BOSTON (AP) — Which wine pairs well with Shark Week? Does a pinot noir
have enough acidity to cut through the grime of a Tough Mudder race? Is
a big, brassy cabernet bold enough of a quaff for a night of naming dead
rodents after an ex?
And is a wine named SEX too provocative or not provocative enough?
Absurd as they may sound, these are the questions haunting wine
marketers grappling with slumping sales and increasingly elusive
drinkers. How consumers -- especially younger drinkers -- answer them
will determine whether an industry long defined by fuddy-duddy pretense
can find its footing in 2026 and beyond.
“That self-important way that wine can refer to itself — we’re really
trying to tip that on its head,” said Helen Kurtz, chief of marketing
for The Wine Group, which hopes that offerings such as its easy-drinking
Cupcake Vineyards wines can attract a generation that came of age on
Frappuccinos and gas station BuzzBallz.
“It’s about being less serious about ourselves, because that’s what this
consumer is demanding,” she said.
By which she means partnering the company’s MD 20/20 (yes, it’s a wine)
with World Wrestling Entertainment matches (“Mad Dog Enters the Ring”),
and launching the aptly named Fuel by Franzia line of boxed wine
beverages for NASCAR (“Full Throttle Flavor”).
Alcohol consumption has dropped
It’s a fresh lesson on the importance of finding your customer rather
than hoping they find you. Because almost across the board, alcohol
consumption is down, a trend that accelerated post-pandemic. A host of
factors is at play, including aging Boomers seeking healthier
lifestyles, Gen Z’s gravitation to low- and no-alcohol beverages, and
widening availability of alternatives such as marijuana.
Each segment of the alcohol industry -- valued at around $560 billion in
the U.S. -- is responding differently. Hard liquor, for example, has
found a rare growth category in ready-to-drink canned cocktails. But the
wine industry faces its own constellation of challenges, many of its own
making.
For anyone new to wine -- particularly much-coveted 20-somethings --
finding one’s way can be daunting, something of a Château du Stuffy
effect.
“You’ve got a bunch of things, what you might call friction points, with
wine, that are particularly salient to younger consumers,” including
cost and drinkability, said Christian Miller, director of research for
the Wine Market Council.
A pretentious image keeps some customers away
Wine, from the labels to the language used to describe it, historically
has leaned pricy and pretentious (looking at you, “notes of asphalt and
barnyard”). Wine trends also have favored boozy and bracing styles, a
hard sell for folks used to sipping hard seltzers at the club.
Fewer than a third of Gen-Z households own a corkscrew, according to a
trends report by the British household products company Lakeland. Even
simply trying a wine comes with a gatekeeper: Hard liquor is easy to
sample at a bar or as single-shot nips; most wine requires a full-bottle
commitment.
A cadre of wineries has begun pushing the bounds of wine culture by
ditching the fussy façade in favor of a sassy vibe and accessible
language. Price matters, too (the sweet spot seems to be the $8 to $20 a
bottle range), but not nearly so much as the message.
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A variety of pinot noir wines, from left, Josh Cellars Reserve,
Juggernaut, and Chloe, are displayed at a grocery store in Concord,
N.H. on June 8, 2026. (J.M. Hirsch via AP)
 It's about using contemporary
communication to pitch "something that’s been made for centuries,”
said Charles Smith, founder of House of Smith, the company behind
younger, shopper-friendly brands such as Kung Fu Girl Riesling and
SEX Rosé. “My mantra is always to communicate the language of wine
to everyone because not everyone speaks wine. The wine should be a
reflection of the consumer who is going to buy it.”
Can tie-ins to pop culture make wine more relatable?
Bogle Family Wine Collection has leaned in with its Juggernaut
Wines. Adorned with almost graphically violent labels showcasing
alpha predators -- a shark, a grizzly, an orca, a lion and some sort
of particularly angry bird of prey -- the bottles are a far cry from
the placid villas and languorous ladies plastered across so many
wines.
The other side of it is getting those bottles into spaces not
traditionally associated with wine, said Jessica LaBounty, the
company’s marketing director. For two years, Juggernaut has
announced “Adventure awaits” as it sponsored the grueling Tough
Mudder races. They’ve also done placements at zoos that host nights
where people can name dead rodents and insects after former partners
and feed them to the animals. Cheers…?
And this year, it’s Discovery network’s Shark Week. Juggernaut's
chardonnay label sports an especially snappish great white and “just
the right amount of bite.”
“The viewer base of Shark Week lines up really, really nicely with
who we know our consumer to be," LaBounty said. "It’s another way to
meet them where they are already versus kind of asking them to come
to us.”
Learning to speak Gen Z is key
The goal is to bridge a generational divide in which wine got lost.
Younger drinkers don’t and won’t talk about wine the way older
drinkers do. To point, there's a clever social media meme about a
Millennial marketing team pitching wine vs. a Gen-Z social media
team. The Millennial effort goes on at length about terroir and
full-bodied flavors. Gen-Z’s pitch? “it’s giving… yummy”.
Vibe is everything for Bread & Butter Wines, with the tagline,
“Don’t overthink it.” As in, pair their red blend with a candy
charcuterie board. Or their pinot noir with a Thanksgiving leftovers
sandwich. Want fries with that? Try their prosecco.
“The No. 1 goal is to disrupt the shelf because it is so crowded,”
said Caitlin Ward, brand and digital marketing director. “Sassiness
is a way to do that.”
___
J.M. Hirsch is a longtime food writer who was food editor of The
Associated Press for nearly a decade until 2016.
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