Americans are drinking less. What’s that mean for winemakers in the Hill Country and Heartland?

The American Heartland has experienced a boom in wineries over the last three decades. But with U.S. wine sales trending down since 2019, some producers are feeling the effects more than others.

By Rachel Cramer, Harvest Public MediaOctober 6, 2025 10:45 am,

From Harvest Public Media:

This story is part of Food Routes, a Harvest Public Media series about local food.

In northern Iowa, the morning sun lights up a vineyard surrounded by corn fields. The grape harvest is well underway with a machine pulled by a small tractor.

Anne Zwink sips on coffee as she watches the harvester comb trellises, shaking grapes loose from the vine. Zwink is Soldier Creek Winery’s award-winning winemaker and president of the Iowa Wine Growers Association.

“We’re actually harvesting four varieties today because everything became ripe all at once last week in the heat,” she said.

The machine tips 600 pounds of La Crescent, a cold-hardy and disease-resistant grape, into a large bin. The harvest has been lower than average this year, Zwink says. The vines are still recovering from a four-year drought, and a few acres were damaged by herbicide drift from nearby fields.

But Zwink says the biggest challenge for her family’s winery and others across the state are sales.

“We have a really hard cash flow problem right now where we have a lot of money in the tanks, and it’s hard to actually sell the product that’s in the tank,” Zwink said.

Rachel Cramer / Harvest Public Media

La Crescent is a staple wine grape in Iowa and other parts of the Midwest, said Ann Zwink. Along with cold-hardiness and disease-resistance, she said it produces "a really delicious orange musket type of aroma" with notes of orange blossom, tea, honey and citrus.

Globally, wine consumption has trended down since 2018. In the U.S., volumes fell by 15% between 2019 and 2024. The largest losses were in Florida, New York and California, where many consumers switched to spirits and ready-to-drink beverages, like canned cocktails and hard seltzers.

But the number of American adults who report drinking alcohol has also dropped to 54%, according to a recent Gallup poll — marking an all-time low since the initial poll in 1939. And those who drink say they’re consuming less alcohol.

Health concerns are the biggest driver behind the behavior shift. The rate of participants who said “one or two drinks a day” negatively affects health increased from 26% in 2016 to 53% in 2025. This view was held highest by 18-35 year-olds.

In response to suppressed demand and canceled contracts with large winemakers, some grape growers in California and Washington have pulled out their least productive vineyards.

Rachel Cramer / Harvest Public Media

Anne Zwink stands above the grape press in the crush pad at Soldier Creek Winery. The juice collected in the tray below is pumped into a fermentation tank where it will turn into wine over several months.

Randall Vos, commercial fruit crops field specialist for Iowa State University Extension, said Iowa also faces a greater supply of grapes than demand.

“It’s a challenge,” Vos said. “Do you ride it out and hopefully in a couple years it’ll be better, or do you pull out that vineyard? That’s a long term decision.”

Some Iowa wineries have closed in recent years.

But not every region of the American Heartland is experiencing the same effects. Kentucky, Tennessee and North Dakota saw significant increases in per capita wine consumption between 2019 and 2024.

And wineries in areas with large tourism economies seem to be buffered from the national consumer trends.

Optimism in Texas

Tourism is a big part of the wine industry in Texas, which recently emerged as one of the top wine-producing states in the U.S. Wine sales have decreased since 2019, but not as severely as the national average. And sales for super-premium and higher-priced wines have actually increased.

“Things are slowing down right now, but there’s hope that this slump will bounce back very quickly,” said Michael Cook, a viticulturist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.

Texas has eight American Viticultural Areas, which are federally recognized wine-growing regions. One of the most popular is the Texas Hill Country, which hosts more than 120 wineries.

“A lot of it is because it’s so close to Austin and San Antonio, and there’s tons of tourism associated with the wine industry there,” he said.

This includes vineyard tours, restaurants on-site, live music, festivals and venue rentals. Cook emphasized the role of “agritourism” extends to all of the wine regions in the Lone Star State.

Michael Marks / Harvest Public Media

Most Texas wineries have vineyards, Cook said. But the majority of grapes used for making wine are grown in the High Plains, the northwest part of the state.

He added that Texas has gained traction as having “a reputable and reliable, high quality wine industry, not just in the United States, but also globally.”

“Texas is a unique place to grow grapes, and we have something special to offer,” Cook said. “We’re not trying to mimic Napa or Bordeaux. Sure, there are varieties we grow here that are the same, but our wine styles are unique to Texas, and we’re very proud of that.”

Over 1,300 soil types, rainfall ranging from 50 inches in the eastern part of the state to negligible amounts in the west and other topographical differences create diverse growing conditions for grapes. Along with the “noble varieties,” like Cabernet and Merlot, vineyards are shifting toward varieties better adapted to hot climates.

This includes Tempranillo and Alberino from Spain, Dolcetto and Negroamaro from southern Italy and other wine grape varieties from Southern France and Greece.

The grape and wine sector is a “strong, long-term industry that will continue to surprise people,” Cook said.

Growth in southern Illinois and Michigan

The Shawnee Hills American Viticulture Area in southern Illinois is another wine region intertwined with tourism.

“There’s a lot of hiking in the area, a lot of outdoor activities, a lot of lakes for fishing. So we have that extra tourism bringing people here,” said Ryan Phelps, winemaker and grape grower at Clad and Cordon and president of the Illinois Grape Growers and Vintners Alliance.

Many come from St. Louis, Chicago, Nashville and Tennessee.

Lacey Hill / Clad and Cordon

Vines grow on tellises at Clad and Cordon in southern Illinois. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Illinois was a significant wine-producing state, along with Missouri and Ohio. The vines disappeared with Prohibition, but the success of a vineyward in the 1980s helped spark a resurgence in southern Illinois in the early 2000s.

“I feel extremely optimistic about the next five years,” Phelps said, adding that Clad and Cordon and other wineries in southern Illinois are planting more vines to meet demand.

But he emphasized that businesses need to offer more than one product and experience.

Along with making wine and serving Illinois beer, Clad and Cordon plans to produce its own hard cider. Live music, event spaces and an on-site lake where visitors can catch fish are part of the model, as well.

While the wine industry at large is nervous about alcohol consumption shifts, Dan McCole says Michigan and the Great Lakes region continue to see growth in the number of wineries. The Michigan State University associate professor specializes in agricultural and natural resource-based tourism.

“We are still, as consumers, prioritizing spending on experiences versus stuff,” McCole said. “The experience economy is booming, and wineries can offer great experiences.”

Courtesy of Clad & Cordon

Clad and Cordon lies within the Shawnee Hills American Viticulture Area (AVA) in Southern Illinois. Currently, there are 277 established AVAs in the U.S. California has the most with 154.

Many of these wineries are concentrated along the southwest and northern shorelines of the Great Lakes where vines thrive in shoreline micro-climates. But more have emerged across the state with the advent of cold-hardy grape varieties, McCole said.

Their success is closely linked to tourism, which is a significant economic driver in the state. Over 130 million people visited in 2024.

McCole said there were concerns about a significant drop in Canadian tourists in response to strained relations with the U.S. But what he’s heard so far from tourism businesses in Michigan suggest U.S. tourists filled in the gap.

“All signs are pointed toward this being a really great year for tourism in the U.S. and in Michigan specifically,” McCole said.

McCole’s research indicates people visiting wineries in the Great Lakes Region are largely driven by a desire to do something novel in their leisure time. When the visitors are mostly local, wineries often need to get more creative and provide a wider variety of experiences.

Rachel Cramer / Harvest Public Media

A macro bin full of Marquette grapes sits in the crush pad at Soldier Creek Winery near Fort Dodge, Iowa. Marquette was developed by the University of Minnesota and became commercially available in 2006. The variety has a lower acid level than many Midwestern grapes and is described as floral and complex, said Anne Zwink. Marquette grows well in the northern Midwest.

Offering something novel

At Soldier Creek Winery in Iowa, Anne Zwink and members of her family sanitize equipment to crush and ferment several tons of grapes from their vineyard. While the winery sells bottles around the state, the bulk of their sales happen in the tasting room next door.

Live music, bingo, “paint and sips” and other new events help draw people in. But Zwink recognizes northwestern Iowa is not a major tourist destination like northern Michigan or southern Illinois.

Most of Soldier Creek Winery’s customers come from a one-and-a-half county radius.

“We’re finding that we have to constantly be creating something new in order to keep interest there and to follow the trends of what consumers want,” Zwink said.

That includes producing cider and making wine with new and unique grape varieties grown in Iowa.

“A lot of wineries are putting wine in cans. We would like to be able to do that, too,” Zwink said

Even if new products and novel experiences are successful for a year, Zwink says it’s worth it in the long-run.

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

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