It Was Never Weed vs. Wine

For the past few years, whenever the topic of wine’s supposed “decline” comes up, cannabis is usually waiting nearby as the convenient culprit. The storyline is irresistible to journalists and trend watchers: younger consumers aren’t drinking as much alcohol, marijuana is now legal in many states, THC beverages are appearing on store shelves, and therefore—case closed—wine is losing ground to weed.  Just yesterday Tilray Brands, the publicly traded cannabis consumer goods company announced that they were purchasing Brew Dog, one of UK's leading craft beer companies--further underscoring the narrative.  

It sounds tidy but reality never fits squarely in a box.  

To begin with, there is some data suggesting that cannabis legalization does slightly dent alcohol sales in certain markets. Studies out of states like Colorado, Washington, and California have shown modest shifts in consumption patterns once recreational marijuana becomes legal. But the effect tends to be uneven. Beer sometimes takes a small hit. Spirits less so. Wine sits somewhere in the middle,  

The question that I am asking is: were cannabis consumers ever going to become wine drinkers in the first place?

Wine, particularly the kind that sustains most serious retailers and producers, has always been a culturally specific beverage. It requires a certain ritual: glasses, good food, conversation, maybe a corkscrew that you know how to use. Wine also has its own syntax—terroir, vintage, appellation—that can feel foreign to some. For generations the American wine audience skewed older, wealthier, and more habit-driven. The people opening Silver Oak or Chateau Beaucastel on a Friday night were rarely the same demographic smoking weed.

That’s not a judgment; it’s just sociology.

If you look at cannabis culture historically in the United States, it evolved alongside beer, music festivals, dorm rooms, and late-night takeout—not white truffles and Austrian crystal. The overlap with serious wine consumption was always limited. In other words, many marijuana smokers weren’t choosing cannabis instead of wine. They were choosing cannabis instead of something else entirely—often beer, sugary RTDs (SUNCRUISERS!), or nothing alcoholic at all. Diet Dew?.  

That distinction matters because it reframes the conversation. If a consumer was never going to buy a $60 Napa Cabernet in the first place, cannabis legalization didn’t “steal” that sale from the wine industry. Instead, the market simply bifurcated  

There’s another point that gets lost in the debate: wine’s biggest problems predate cannabis legalization by decades.  I have exhaustively explored these problems in preview posts.  I recommend this one if you are really interested.  

For the sake of staying on topic Cannabis didn’t cause that drift. It simply arrived while it was happening.