(Wines&Vines) - A panel of experts painted a picture of the “industry of tomorrow” during the general session today at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento.

Winemakers and growers will be making more decisions based on data from complex sensor networks that will take the guesswork out of making wine. It is becoming clearer how the maturing millennial generation will buy and drink wine, but U.S. producers will have to stay aggressive in touting their wines in a market that’s growing more fragmented from spirits, craft beer and imported wines as well. 

Marketing trends

Lulie Halstead is the CEO and founder of Wine Intelligence, which is based in London, England, but studies consumer opinions and buying habits of wine throughout the world. She described five “macro trends” that will have a significant impact on consumer behavior in the near future. 

Transparency in product authenticity and quality is of primary importance to consumers in the United States and China. In China, Halstead said the top reason consumers aren’t buying wine is they’re not certain the product is real—or they can’t trust who is selling it. Considering wine sales in China dropped sharply in recent years, this presents a real problem for U.S. exporters.

Other trends include customizable options and products that appeal to a sense of “well being” or healthy living. Smaller product sizes are also trending, and Halstead said packaging individual servings of premium wine is a great opportunity. “You can have a really good glass of wine at home, but just that one glass if that’s all you want,” she said.

The combination of products or services from different sectors—what Halstead dubbed as fusion—is also a growing trend. She cited examples such as a Mercedes Benz restaurant in Hong Kong and frozen ciders mixed with other flavors.

Such trends may seem at odds with traditional wine marketing, but Halstead said they offer a route to capture the attention of consumers who like drinking wine but may not have the same passion as those who work in the industry. Wine’s competitors—spirits and beer—and many other consumer goods have taken advantage of those trends. “It’s what consumers are looking for because they’re getting it from other categories than ours,” she said.

Halstead said Wine Intelligence pegs the number of regular wine drinkers (those who drink wine at least once a month) at 93 million, or about 40% of the U.S. adult population. She said based on interviews with thousands of wine drinkers and data modeling, the number of regular drinkers should increase to 110 million, or 44% of the population by 2025.

Halstead also has an optimistic view of millennials, who she said spend more per bottle despite being open to other beverages and brand agnostic. “If you add it up, all the dollars the average millennial spends on wine, it would be twice that of a boomer.”

Internet of things in winemaking

On the production side, winemakers in the near future will enjoy a feast of data to make decisions with better information and prevent problems from happening. Mike Holst, senior director of operations at Cypress Semiconductor in Berkeley, Calif., discussed a multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving for winemaking equipment.

He said he didn’t know much about the wine industry until 2010, when his boss, Cypress CEO T.J. Rodgers, who also is the owner of Clos de la Tech winery in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, called a meeting to discuss improving winemaking products.