When Erika Veurink was planning her wedding, she knew she wanted the reception to be at Sauced, a wine bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, known for blasting hip-hop and its disco-ball-adorned dance room.
That Ms. Veurink didn’t really drink did not matter.
Though she doesn’t describe herself as sober, Ms. Veurink, a 28-year-old freelance fashion writer, stopped drinking about six months before her wedding, held in the fall of 2022. By then, she and her then-fiancé had spent lots of time at Sauced, which opened in January 2020.
Ms. Veurink was born in 1996, putting her on the cusp between millennials, the cohort born between 1981 and 1996, and Generation Z, the group born between 1997 and 2012. They’re not known to be a boozy bunch: Some studies have shown that members of Gen Z drink less than the generation of millennials born before them, and that some millennials also drink less than members of older generations. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 viewed having one to two drinks a day as bad for their health, compared with 39 percent of Americans between 35 and 55, and 26 percent of Americans 55 and older.
But for some young adults like Ms. Veurink, drinking less or not at all has not stopped them from developing a taste for wine, particularly natural varieties, its culture and the bars that serve it.
“It felt like we knew them,” Ms. Veurink said. She and her now-husband liked the bar’s atmosphere, too: “It is truly a gorgeous space with a stunning French waitstaff,” she added.
Some bars that specialize in natural wine, which typically uses organic ingredients and fewer additives, channel that uncomplicated approach through laid-back atmospheres that can make the spaces feel more inviting to younger or casual drinkers. Erin Harty, a 32-year-old graphic designer in Austin, described her favorite local bar, LoLo, which serves natural wines, as an easy meeting place where “you’re getting the finer things while also still being comfortable.”
Certain wine bars seemed to be welcoming a shift “toward healthier living and anti-alcohol in an open-arms way,” by serving more nonalcoholic options or wines with a lower percentage of alcohol by volume, Ms. Harty added.
Abbie Leonard, 25, a social worker in St. Louis, has been trying the different nonalcoholic offerings at ’Ssippi, a natural-wine bar in her neighborhood, since she stopped drinking months ago. “Just not my thing,” she said.
She still likes spending time at the bar because it’s a “hip hangout” that, as she put it, “feels genuine and authentic” to her lifestyle.
Farah Sheikh-Ogoe, who until August was a bartender at Moonflower, a wine bar in the West Village, said that many of the young customers she encountered were drinking, but drinking less. “It’s a little bit more of like, I’m going to be thoughtful about what I’m consuming,’” Ms. Sheikh said.
Drinking wine isn’t like taking a shot of vodka or slamming a margarita, said Carson Bennett, a 24-year-old freelance writer and waiter in Brooklyn. “It’s something to sit and savor.”
“I think of watching ‘Ratatouille’ and the way that they drink wine,” she continued. “It is a sort of event.”
Ms. Bennett, who lives in Brooklyn, said that for her and her friends, wine bars function as a much-needed “third place,” using a phrase coined by the American sociologist Ray Oldenburg for a physical space that’s neither where a person lives nor works. She described wine bars as less formal than restaurants and a bit more festive than dives.
Some of her favorite local bars include Cherry On Top and Palmetto, both of which Ms. Bennett likes as much for the “vibes,” she said, as for the wines. For her and other young adults, many of whom grew up sharing their lives on social media, aesthetics have been another way to connect with wine.
Pool parties and events offering wine pairings with made-for-social-media dishes like Cap’n Crunch fried chicken are among the ways that Kashy Khaledi, the owner of Ashes & Diamonds Winery in Napa Valley, has targeted younger fans.
Mr. Khaledi, 47, a former executive at MTV and Capitol Records, estimated that about 20 percent of his customers are Gen Z-ers, a demographic that he has also tried to reach through product design. Mr. Khaledi hired Brian Roettinger, a graphic designer and artist who has made album artwork for Jay-Z and St. Vincent, to create labels for his wine bottles.
His approach to branding reflects the way some winemakers — through labels featuring playful imagery or modernist typography (or sometimes both) — have tried to give drinkers something to talk about beyond flavor profile.
Labels were partly what led Ryan Goydos, a 26-year-old clinical researcher in Manhattan, and his twin brother, Chris Goydos, a surgical resident in Morristown, N.J., to start documenting the wines they drink on an Instagram account called Super Vino Bros.
“To be completely honest with you, that’s how my brother and I initially got into it,” Ryan Goydos said. “We were like, ‘Oh, these labels are so cute and fun.’”
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