Generations do not shop wine the same way. Corriere della Sera’s spring 2026 read made the split plain.
About 29% of Gen Z said they buy wine online, against roughly 8% of Boomers. Younger buyers also lean on tasting first: liking the taste outranks classic food-pairing talk as a reason to choose. Prosecco still dominates broad preference maps, yet Amarone wins in the Gen Z favourite lane in the same coverage.
Mini-concept: discovery path shapes loyalty. If you taste, then click, the bottle becomes a memory you repeat. If you repeat a familiar price tag in the supermarket aisle, loyalty is habit, not curiosity. Both are real. Only one grows new occasions.
For wine versus RTDs, the lesson is practical. Put honest tastes where young people already are — bars, pop-ups, short online stories — then make the buy one tap away. Price loyalty keeps older volume. Taste loyalty builds the next shelf.
Keep the split: 29% vs 8% online, and taste over pairing for the young. Different paths, same need for a reason to open the bottle.
If you take one thing from this story, make it this: wine wins when the night has a reason. A clear number and a clear place turn a headline into a choice you can remember.