(WSJ) - “SO MANY MILLENNIALS ARE interested more in the narrative of the wine rather than the wine,” said Jason Jacobeit, the 29-year-old head sommelier of Bâtard restaurant in New York. “A lot of mediocre wine is being sold on the basis of a story.”

Mr. Jacobeit lamented the fact that few of his generational peers took the time to understand why certain wines are greater than others. The rustic sparkling wine Pét-Nat (short for pétillant-naturel), for example, may be hip and fun, but it will never be as great as Champagne. Mr. Jacobeit said that his peers need to learn to distinguish the difference between “being excited about wine and wine that is genuinely exciting.”

Taylor Parsons, the 35-year-old wine director of République in Los Angeles attributes these “gaps” in millennials’ wine knowledge to their incessant search for the next cool thing, be it orange wine or Slovenian Chardonnay. “We get tons of requests for Slovenian Chardonnay,” he said.

Which might just mean you’ll soon be seeing many more Slovenian Chardonnays on restaurant wine lists. After all, millennials have been heralded as the generation capable of changing everything. The largest generation to date at 75 million strong, they certainly have clout. This group of 18- to 34-year-olds is technologically savvy, environmentally engaged and eager for stories about the things they love. They’ve helped transform the way we connect with one another, but will they also (re)shape the way we drink? I’d say “perhaps,” although a millennial might answer “Yaaaasssss!”

In search of an answer, I talked to as many millennial sommeliers, winemakers, retailers and wine drinkers as I could. I also began combing through piles of data, starting with an August survey from Wine Opinions, a California-based wine-research group. In the survey, the results of which will be released later this month, the group polled 2,634 wine drinkers from three generations—millennials, Gen X and boomers—about their wine preferences, buying habits and information sources.