(Wine-Searcher) - The Wine Market Council's latest research shows up some unusual trends.

The hottest expensive wine in the United States is rosé. 

It's not surprising to see rosé sales are up. But the magnitude of sales growth for rosés over $11 is staggering: up nearly 60 percent last year, according to Nielsen. Rosé over $11 may seem like it's still a small market, at 0.2 percent of all table wine. But it's not that small: that's the same size as the entire US wine market for all wines from Portugal or South Africa.

Rosé was one of several fast risers mentioned at the Wine Market Council's annual Sonoma County presentation last week. The news was rosier than last year; despite dire warnings that the wine industry might face a decline in consumption for the first time in decades, wine sales in the US actually rose 2.5 percent last year, the fastest growth rate since 2012.

If you were asked, what's the second most expensive varietal wine on average in US food and liquor stores (Pinot Noir is first), what would you guess? Cabernet Sauvignon, perhaps?

In fact, the answer is Cab's dad, Sauvignon Blanc. Americans pay an average of $9.04 for a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in these stores, easily topping the average of $6.90 for all bottles of wine. (The average bottle price of wines purchased anywhere, including in wine shops and online, has been estimated to be more than $8.)

A related factoid is that New Zealand has passed France to be the fourth-biggest exporter to the US by total dollar sales in the stores Nielsen measures. No wonder, as most Kiwi wines in the US are the two most expensive, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. If New Zealand's rapid growth rate of 18 percent in 2015 were to continue this year, the island nation would be on the verge of passing slumping Argentina for third (Italy is first; Australia, despite many yellow tales of its demise, is still second). It may not seem possible that tiny New Zealand could soon become the third-largest importer of wine into the US, but 10 years ago it didn't seem possible that Argentina could, so you never know.

Wine-Searcher readers will not be surprised to learn that the average bottle price of wines sold online in 2015 was $38.23 – more than five times the cost of wines sold in food and liquors stores. Online wine sales are now a $2 billion industry in the US, and represent 5 percent of all retail wine sales by value.

The Wine Market Council can't let a meeting pass without a long discussion of its favorite topic, millennials, soon to become the top purchasers of wine – and sooner than you think. Boomers are still consuming more wine, and are still more likely to be high-frequency wine drinkers. But now there are many more occasional wine drinkers among millennials than among boomers, which means there are more total wine drinkers among millennials.

And when millennials do drink wine, they drink more of it: 2.4 glasses per occasion, compared to 2.1 for Generation X, 2 for baby boomers and 1.6 for older drinkers. Millennials have young livers.