Why millennials are ditching vodka for Whisky and Manhattans

Is there an industry millennials are not supposedly disrupting? This week it’s vodka manufacturers, who are suffering thanks to America’s most aggressively marketed-to demographic.

According to Pernod Ricard SA, the makers of Absolut Vodka, vodka sales are down almost 2% over the last four years. In that same period, from 2010-2014, worldwide whiskey sales climbed 2.7%, with sales of American-made bourbons and Tennessee whiskeys up an incredible 17%. For Absolut Vodka specifically, which makes up half of Pernod’s US sales, last quarter’s earnings were likewise not good news, reported as having declined 3.3%.

Vodka manufacturers should be worried. Speaking briefly, if I may, as a 26-year-old ambassador of this most lauded and reviled generation of those born between 1980 and 2000-ish, few liquors are less interesting than Absolut of any flavor, which immediately brings to mind early experiences of drinking, when we didn’t know any better. Now, with some age, and some college-level stupidity behind us, we’ve gotten a bit more discerning and whiskey is our choice. Long live whiskey neat, whiskey on the rocks and occasionally, whiskey gingers. May we never drink flavored vodka again.

I’m not alone in my conversion, according to Dan Emino, a bartender at New York’s The Wren, a restaurant and bar located in the East Village where whiskey – bourbon, rye, and scotch – take up about 30% of the shelf space and are positioned right in front of a centrally seated customer’s eye.


more on theguardian.com