Research survey reveals preferences and attitudes

Calls for optimism are the theme of new year missives from wine industry colleagues near and far. One in particular came from a Northern California winemaker who is puzzling over the lack of adoption by Gen Z consumers, an increasingly fragmented and dispirite domestic market and included a request for insights that might inspire hope.

In response, I shared some of the Gen Z survey data that I’ve been gathering as part of a research study of these novice consumers at San Jose State University. His response; “[this] gives me hope” which in turn inspired me to share some of the more interesting points from the study here.

Hundreds of Gen Z students enroll in wine appreciation classes at San Jose State each year many of whom profess to never having tasted wine or even to outright dislike. Curiosity seems to be the driving force behind their willingness to commit 18 weeks to the subject of wine. But why they enroll has not been a primary concern of the study.

Using a course curriculum designed specifically to develop wine likers – students can choose to taste sweet/off dry and dry wine styles during the course – which covers everything from sensory awareness and wine history to the fundamentals of the world’s key wine producing regions.

At the conclusion of the course, students are asked to complete a survey designed to gauge their preferences and attitudes towards wine. The results offer some surprises and provide direction for future studies that will shed more light on how quickly different types of tasters embrace dry styles.

Gen Z Wine Appreciation Survey 2025

Deeper analysis of the survey responses is underway so, for the time being, take what you will from the below summary.

The taster categories of tolerant, sensitive and very sensitive are those defined by the Wine and Spririt Education Trust but the survey question was expanded to reveal more nuance regarding the tasters’ perceptions after 18 weeks of wine evaluation training. With the majority of tasters being tolerant or somewhere between tolerant and sensitive, this indicates a greater tolerance for bitterness and complex, robust flavors found in both sweet and dry wine styles. In the below wine style by preference chart you’ll find that students state by name their preferences for a broad range of sweet and sweet fortified styles that they tasted during the class.

Preferences for dry styles naturally evolve more quickly for some types of tasters than others. Once students discover wine styles they enjoy that evolution seems to speed up as their curiosity and interest are peeked by exploring a broad range of production styles and aging regimes.

Despite being exposed to a pantheon of the world’s historic sweet and off dry wine styles, many of which novice tasters would rarely encounter independently, and classic dry wines, at the end of the 18-week class a surprising number of students – 16 percent of those surveyed – reported they did not discover a gateway wine defined as a wine they “liked.” This could be interpretted as they simply prefer other types of beverage alcohol over wine. The remaining 84 percent can be described as “wine likers.”

Students’ engagement in the course is evidenced by their responses to short answer questions like the one above in which they could recall and correctly state the specific wine or wine style they preferred. Specific wines i.e. the Quady Essencia and spatlese Riesling emerged as favorite white wines with Brachetto leading the pack for favorite red. Surprisingly, esoteric wines including Mavrodaphne of Patras, Vin Santo and Pedro Ximenez sherry were called out by name by tolerant tasters.

Despite 16 percent of tasters not finding a gateway wine, 99 percent of students felt the class enhanced their enjoyment of alcoholic beverages in general.