Wine at dinner? More young French say, ‘Only if it’s nonalcoholic.’
| Maisdon-sur-Sèvres, France
Rows of evenly spaced grapevines stretch out in serried ranks across the French countryside, as winemakers Mathilde Ollivier and Stéphane Cottenceau step carefully into their rain-soaked vineyard. Ms. Ollivier’s family has made wine here for eight generations, using white grapes grown at the Domaine de la Grenaudière in the Loire Valley.
So when Ms. Ollivier suggested to her father three years ago that she and business partner Mr. Cottenceau wanted to use these grapes to make nonalcoholic wine, it didn’t go over well.
“There was definitely a bit of apprehension,” says Ms. Ollivier, whose winery has been producing Muscadet, a dry white wine, since 1723. “But I explained that this is the way the market is evolving and we needed to respond. When he tasted it, he felt reassured.”
Why We Wrote This
To much of the world, wine is as iconically French as a baguette or the Eiffel Tower. But for an increasing number of young French, wine has lost its appeal, especially when it is alcoholic. Is this a sea change for French vineyards – and society?
Now, the winery’s Phénomène brand is one of dozens of nonalcoholic wines pouring into a French beverage market in the throes of sea change. Wine, long a centerpiece of the epic, multicourse French meal, has begun to lose its appeal in recent years. The French are drinking 60% less wine than they did 60 years ago, a trend that goes far beyond Dry January.
And it’s not just wine that the French are passing up. A growing number of French people, especially millennials and Generation Z youths, describe themselves as “flexidrinkers” or “sober-curious,” and sales of nonalcoholic wine, beer, and spirits have nearly doubled since 2019. In a country once associated with a carefree, casual attitude toward alcohol, the French are drinking less of it than ever – starting with their glass of Bordeaux.
“Young people aren’t drinking like their parents, many of whom see it as normal to sit down to dinner every night with a glass of wine,” says Thomas Houdayer, spokesperson for Divin, a brand based in the Loire Valley that sells eight varieties of alcohol-free wine. “Making nonalcoholic wine has created a new opportunity for our wine industry. It’s a revolution.”
The growing appeal of “nolow”
Part of that revolution are young people like Sarah Missaoui, a Parisian who says she first became sober-curious a few years ago after trying an alcohol-free gin at a friend’s house.
“I thought it was amazing,” says Ms. Missaoui. “But it was really hard to find nonalcoholic versions of drinks in bars.”
So, Ms. Missaoui quit her job as a journalist and in February 2023 opened Déjà Bu, the first 100% alcohol-free bar in France.
A quarter of the people who come to Déjà Bu end up purchasing a nonalcoholic bottle of something from the bar’s takeaway shop, says Ms. Missaoui. But most come for the novelty of the alcohol-free bar experience.
“I’m definitely drinking less alcohol than before, but I still want to be able to go out and have fun,” says Louise Francisco-Pottier, a young physical therapist, on a recent night at Déjà Bu.
“Before, you had to justify to your friends why you weren’t drinking,” says her friend Laura Diaz-Lacoste. “Now, it’s socially acceptable.”
Indeed, French young people, like their American counterparts, are drinking less alcohol than their parents. In 2022, France saw the highest proportionate growth of new no- and low-alcohol drinkers in Europe.
The “nolow” alcohol trend has picked up speed since the COVID-19 pandemic, when young people became more socially isolated, and Gen Zers are taking the lead. Young people are focused on controlling their online image, and protecting their mental and physical health more than previous generations. Binge drinking, once seen as a rite of passage, is now viewed as anxiety-producing.
“Young people are looking for experiences and moments they can post on social media, not experimenting and risk-taking,” says Elodie Gentina, a researcher on Generation Z at the IÉSEG School of Management. “Before, young people couldn’t socialize without alcohol. Now they realize they absolutely can.”
A societal shift?
The French market is tuning in to these changes. High-end hotels like the Ritz in Paris have joined corner brasseries in offering mocktails alongside cocktails on their restaurant menus. In October 2024, French luxury goods powerhouse LVMH announced it was acquiring a 30% stake in alcohol-free sparkling wine brand French Bloom. And since 2022, France has offered Europe’s first trade fair dedicated exclusively to nolow drinks.
Still, the nolow industry remains niche – it represents around 3% of the French market. And although alcohol-free wine is seeing an uptick in sales, only a handful of French wineries have invested in the costly machines needed to remove the alcohol from wine without simply boiling it. Most outsource the process to neighboring countries such as Germany.
Changing the hearts and minds of the French, especially when it comes to wine, is a work in progress. But there, too, young people are leading the way.
“The tired stereotypes about the French are no longer accurate,” says Jean-Marie Cardebat, a professor of economics and a wine industry specialist at the University of Bordeaux.
He says young people are already less likely to drink wine than their parents, finding it too high in alcohol and its multiple varieties and styles too intimidating. They’re also more open, he says, to innovative wine-based drinks such as seltzers – which mix wine with sparkling water to create a lower alcohol content – or alcohol-free wine.
“It’s like decaffeinated coffee,” says Mr. Cardebat. “French people used to think it was disgusting, and now it has been completely normalized. It’s the same for wine.”
Economic forces
For French winemakers, innovation is part of a conscious effort to save a struggling industry.
France is still the third-biggest exporter of wine in the world, behind Italy and Spain. But in 2020, and again in 2022, its growers sent 53 million gallons of their wine to be distilled into industrial alcohol, because they could not find a market for it, and the government offers compensation to farmers who uproot their vineyards.
Now is the time, say winegrowers, to adapt to an evolving French society: one more focused on healthy lifestyles, and less likely to linger over a heavy meal with glasses of wine or eau-de-vie than previous generations.
“French people are choosing not to drink alcohol for X, Y, and Z reasons, and we can’t ignore it,” says Mr. Cottenceau of the Domaine de la Grenaudière. “Times are changing and we have to move with them.”
