Vins De France increasingly on-trend

t’s a multi-million-hectolitre question – how can wines appeal to young people? Why not by being a part of their drinking occasions, explains Juliette Joly, mixology project manager for Anivin de France, the national trade association tasked with managing the category. The fact is that consumers aged 20 to 30 – aka Millennials – have more of a penchant for beers and spirits than wine. So Vins De France or VDF devised six cocktail recipes, putting a new twist on the classics and turning the Moscow Mule, for example, into the Chardonnay-based Chardo Mule. The cocktails were launched in 2021.

The drive to “win back young people” through the mixology focus is being ramped up in 2022, says Joly, firstly in the hospitality industry but mostly via digital media with a dialled up strategy based on adverts and partnerships with influencers on Instagram and TikTok. The Vins De France range of cocktails, which is a “newcomer to the closed world of mixology” according to Anivin director Valérie Pajotin, will be showcased at exhibitions.

The organisation is painstakingly establishing its cocktails in the mixology space – which will reportedly take at least 5 years – and has set a short-term goal of ensuring they feature on the drinks menus of as many hospitality outlets as possible. The aim is that consumers will then buy a bottle of wine to reproduce the recipe at home. “Once the bottle of white or rosé wine is in the fridge, consumers will taste it as it is, without any mixers. The medium-term objective is for them to discover the wine, with cocktails as a means to an end”, explains Pajotin.