Cool moms and narc dads forever

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To celebrate Fingers’ 3rd birthday, I’m doing a subscription drive. Annual subscriptions are 25% off—just $60 for the first year (usually $80):

This is the deepest discount I’ll offer this year, and it expires soon. Don’t sleep on it!

Below, you’ll find one of my most popular recent paywalled stories (originally published 8/16/23). I’m sending it to you in full to show you what kind of independent coverage and commentary about drinking in America you can expect as a paying Friend of Fingers. Thanks for reading, hope to see you on the other side of the paywall.—Dave.

In August, Gallup released the results of its annual survey about American drinking habits. Despite all the recent pearl-clutching amongst beverage-alcohol industry types and mainstream medial outlets about the alleged sober-curiosity of younger millennial and Gen Z drinkers, 62% of respondents told the pollster they be drinkin’—which is basically identical to the average rate of self-reported guzzling in the consumer-sentiment survey’s 84-year history. That’s good news for enthusiasts and those “in the trade.” Unclutch those pearls! Or don’t, because there’s bad news to be sussed out of Gallup’s tally-up, too, if you dare look.

If you believe that drinking in America is a vital part of the social and civic fabric, and/or your livelihood, the best news stemming from this latest snapshot is that it’s extremely unremarkable. Gallup has run these polls more or less annually since 1939 (though there have been gaps, including a six-year hiatus right after it began due to World War II, which, fair), and while no one year should be considered a full portrait of the United States’ consumption habit, the trend across nearly a century is very, very steady. The percentage of respondents who answered in the affirmative when asked whether they “have occasion to use alcoholic beverages” hit a low point in 1958 (55%), and a high point between 1976-1978 (71%). It’s ping-ponged between those lower and upper bounds ever since.

(Important caveat: these are not sales data, they’re data of aggregated responses Gallup collects in interviews with representative populations about their behaviors and preferences. Like any other charts or graphs, assume these are an incomplete look at the market, and potentially distorted by the simple reality that stated preference does not equate 1:1 with actual drinking habits, despite the pollsters’ corrections for bias.)

That positive upshot is a negative for public-health officials and anti-alcohol activists hoping to usher in a more sober and healthful populace, especially when coupled with trends over the past couple decades of Gallup data that suggest Americans are becoming less morally opposed to alcohol over time, and less concerned that its use poses even a “somewhat serious” problem to society. They’ll have to console themselves with the fact that the size of the “cool mom” minority of U.S. respondents that believe in lowering the drinking age to 18 has remained basically unchanged for years, as has the size of the “narc dad” majority that believes penalties for underage drinking should be stricter. Situation normal, all fucked up.

The real agony and ecstasy in this poll’s data can be found in the breakout of what drinkers have been drinking since 1993. It’s a measure of changing preferences, and if you’re in the booze business, it’s gonna hit different (as those still-drinking Gen Zers say) depending on the category in which you make your bones:

See all the way over there on the righthand side, how the dotted-blue line has been kicking up considerably ever since 2017? If you’re in the spirits business, this is huge news: for the first time ever, over 30% of Americans reported drinking liquor this year. Also for the first time in this poll’s history, you have overtaken wine. Your national “share of throat” [editor’s note: *shudder*] is just a few jiggers shy of a proper third, you’re beating beer on overall dollar share, and things are looking up.

If you are a winemaker other than E. & J. Gallo (see below), this is bad, for all the reasons we’ve discussed. Lest ye forget, Gallup’s Megan Brenan helpfully notes that this poll comports with other indicators showing that “Younger drinkers prefer beer and liquor, while older drinkers favor beer and wine.” Sorry! Please soothe yourself by looking at the broader trend, cull your portfolios of sub-$11 bottles, and launching a clone of either BeatBox or Screaming Eagle.

Those in the beer business, I think, should be the most concerned of the bunch. As always, the X-factors of pricepoint and shelf-life are germane; beer compares unfavorably on both metrics to wine and spirits, making it more reactive to short-term trends. But directionally, it’s impossible to ignore the beverage’s slow decline in stated preference over the past 30 years—from 47% in 1993, down to a low of 35% last year, before recovering slightly to 37% this year. Though per-capita consumption of beer has held more or less steady for the past two decades, the number of drinkers who are thinking beer off-the-rip on drinking “occasions” (in the jargon) is falling. Given the relatively stable majority of self-reported drinkers over this period, and the fact that Gen Z is smaller than previous generations, the explanation for the slide is likely some mix of fewer drinkers overall, and less of them picking beer from the cornucopia of booze options now out there.

Either way you slice it, that’s a problem for the brewing industry that’s proven frustratingly difficult to solve so far, heavily malt-based alcopop boom not withstanding. Which is another reason I’m curious to see what cannabis giant Tilray Brands plans to do with the seven craft beer brands and one defunct energy drink brand it bought from Anheuser-Busch InBev for firesale prices—the whole category is suffering from a decades-long vibe shift, and not since craft beer’s heyday last decade has it seen a sustained shakeup at scale. You’ve heard of Shock Doctrine, now get ready for Shock Top Doctrine! Maybe! 

Coda: Counterpoint… sorta?

📬 Good post alert

For more on This Fuckin’ Guy™️ and the faux-populist right-wing groundswell he’s currently soundtracking/siphoning fame from, I highly recommend this column from , labor reporter nonpareil and the editor/publisher of . If you see a good post that the Fingers Fam should know about, please send me that good post via email or Instagram DM.

📚 The seedy, plonky past of the world’s biggest wine company

Welcome to Boozeletter Mini Book Reviews, where we spotlight new-to-me volumes about the business and culture of drinking in America. Please consider purchasing your books via The Fingers Reading Room to support the boozeletter, thank you.

It’s a pretty safe bet that any North American beverage-alcohol corporation that’s been around since before Prohibition did some shady shit during that ignominious 13-year stretch in this country’s history. Seagram, the Canadian rye-running outfit formerly owned by the now (mostly) legit Bronfman family, is probably the most notorious example. But thanks to some nifty little loopholes in the Volstead Act’s wording and application, stateside wineries were also able to capitalize on the clamoring thirst of the American drinking public back then, and none did so more successfully than E. & J. Gallo. Today, it’s the world’s largest wine company, and it remains privately held by the family whose name appears beneath its iconic red rooster logo.

Published in 2009, biographer Jerome Tuccille’s profile of the cutthroat California wine-making dynasty, Gallo Be Thy Name, doesn’t include its lucrative latter-day pivot into spirits-based canned cocktails via High Noon. But it does include a century-spanning history that helps to explain why a Central Valley wine conglomerate fell ass-backwards into a billion-dollar vodka- and tequila-based seltzer brand. Gallo has always catered to the whims of the unsophisticated American palate, whether by plying speakeasy customers with vine-glo and plonk with Al Capone’s help,1 exploiting the nascent street wine segment with Boone’s Farm ~30 years later, or rolling out Carlo Rossi and Bartles & Jaymes to capitalize on trends more effectively than smaller competitors.

Tuccille’s book ably situates that savvy, sometimes-unsavory business acumen (mostly attributed to the late Ernest Gallo, the “E” to also-late brother Julio’s “J” in the firm’s full name) in the context of broader national shifts in culture, commerce, and politics that unfold as Gallo ascends to global wine-producing supremacy over the 20th century.2 Theirs being a wealthy, multi-branched family tree, the Gallo clan has plenty of internecine family drama ranging from petty to bona fide tragic; that complicates their story in ways that the author handles graciously, but mostly unsparingly. It’s neither a plodding tome nor a page-turner, but if you’re interested in the way power manifests behind the bottle, you’ll enjoy Gallo Be Thy Name. 6.5/10.

📝 From the Fingers Corrections Department

More of a clarification here. In a previous edition, I registered this boozeletter’s considerable editorial disappointment that Dunkin’ Spiked (the soon-to-be-released alcoholic crossover between Harpoon Brewery and the artist formerly known as Dunkin’ Donuts) did not appear to have any caffeine in it. But after publication, I was able to get in touch with a Dunkin’ representative who confirmed that there actually will be some caffeine in the beverages, despite not being listed anywhere on the TTB paperwork, label, or press materials. Expect 15-30mg per 12oz spiked tea depending on flavor, and 30mg per 12oz spiked coffee. It’s still way less than the standard 100mg you’d find in a normal cup of non-alcoholic coffee, but hey—better and/or worse than nothing! The original post has been updated accordingly.

📲 The best Fingers meme ever and/or lately

Don’t miss out, follow Fingers on Instagram today. It’s free and your feed will thank you. (Not really, that would be weird. But you know what I mean.) Also sorry for the screenshot. Apparently Instagram embeds, like Twitter embeds, are also broken on Substack (the platform I use to publish Fingers.) Thank you to our billionaire website oligarchs for destroying the internet’s basic functionality in pursuit of infinite profit!