Texas is seeing an increase in the number of wine drinkers, but what seems to have surprised marketing execs is that Hispanics make up a large portion of the states increase. This has market researchers scrambling to gather information about a demographic they did not realize was all that interesting in the beverage.
Last week, at a meeting of the Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association, those in attendance were told by the assistant director of the Texas Wine Marketing Research Institute Natalia Kolyesnikova that “no information is available about the Hispanic wine market.”
In the last year, Kolyesnikova and the institute conducted a study to ask three separate Hispanic-composed focus groups their opinions about how, when, and where they drink wine. Their answers were strikingly varied, and suggest that marketers are wrong to try to market to Hispanic wine drinkers uniformly.
It appears that younger drinkers appreciate a Spanish-language label, while Older drinkers say the label does not matter to them. Spanish-speaking drinkers tend to have ore interest in the health benefits of certain wines, and English-speaking Hispanics do not care.
Though Kolyesnikova stresses that more research is needed, she noted that “acculturation has to be taken into account. [Everyone needs] to be approached differently.”
Those at the institute aren’t the only ones seeing the changes in Texas’ wine drinkers. Winery owners have also noticed a change in those that come in for wine tastings.
According to Kolyesnikova, Hispanics represent about 14 percent of the state’s wine market, with that number expected to rise.
