A good article I found from the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-youngwine12mar12,0,5536281.story
We’ve seen this on our mailing list. Lots of young people, under 30 who buy our wine for special event drinking. The one piece I thought was missing was any mention of the much higher than traditional percentage of women buying and drinking wine under 30.
One of the classes I attended at UC Davis in 2002 noted that the percentage of wine over $25 bought by women was under 10%. Women made up the majority of wine purchases, they just bought daily drinking wine at the supermarket, not higher end wines. This mirrored what was traditional in Europe, where women had bought the daily drinking wine, and men bought special occasion wine.
I think for the new generation on wine drinkers, you can through that out the door. Women are buying the wine across all price points. If one has any doubts about the shift in the market place, I’d suggest looking at the ad campaigns of Budweiser. They clearly feel pressure on their core market of 21-30 year olds and are trying to counter wines growing popularity.