Human Centric Group - Is Alcohol Too Much For 2026? Or Is Not?

Is Alcohol Too Much For 2026? Or Is Not?

What a fortified wine teaches every brand about the age of moderation.

In the last 3 years, 61 million people walked away from alcohol. Another 38 million switched to low-alcohol beverages.* Well, if you are a Port wine producer, this no-low alcohol trend is quite alarming. Generally, Port wine stands between 19 and 22% ABV. The tide is pulling one way, and Port is standing exactly where it always has.

Before asking “why can’t you just make an alcohol-free Port”, I give you a little nerdy contest: During fermentation, grape spirit is added to inhibit the yeast and so halt fermentation. Inevitably, this pushes up the level of residual sugar, which the yeast can no longer consume. Here, alcohol is no longer an ingredient but what the product is. Take it away, and you wouldn’t make it lighter; you’d make it cloyingly sweet and spineless.

Seems Port wine is hopeless. And yet, the very thing that condemns it in 2026 might be the very thing that saves it.

The no-low alcohol trend isn’t about less.

We all already know that no/low has become a fixture in the beverage world, and that younger people are drinking less and less. But I’d like to bring the bigger picture into focus: young people aren’t rejecting alcohol always; they are rejecting alcohol when it’s not worthy. Sugars follow the same path.

For millennials and previous generations, it was perfectly normal to have a beer, a glass of wine, maybe three in a row. On a random Wednesday evening, alone. That is mind-blowing for a typical Gen Z. This is what is killing ordinary consumption. If it’s the ordinary that’s dying, then the products in danger are the forgettable ones.

Nowadays, Port has the possibility to bypass the criticism of its category by triggering new or latent consume/purchase occasions.

At the branding level, understanding this mechanism is essential. HCG recently worked on exactly this with one of the most important Port producers: Instead of reformulating, designing the occasion of consumption. No longer competing on “how much alcohol,” but on “this moment is worth it.” But the moments that are worth it differ from consumer to consumer, or more precisely, from person to person. Which is why understanding people is essential.

Two doors, same Port.

Take the exact same Port and look at it through two different doors:

There are those who are looking for something to pass on, and there are those who aren’t after the last glass of the night, but the first.

So there’s a Giacomo, and there’s a Marta.

Giacomo is buying a piece of time. He’s at the point in life where you stop thinking about what you own and start thinking about what you’ll leave behind. When his son gets married, he’s looking for something that will last as long as the marriage should. Perhaps a bottle from the year of the wedding, set aside for some far-off anniversary. That he’s newly retired and lives in a big city, the data can tell you precisely. But what makes him buy is the passing-on, not the pension.

Marta isn’t after yet another Aperol spritz. She wants a gesture that draws a line: work is over; now something she’s chosen for herself begins. Serve it tall over ice, long with tonic, an orange twist. That Port is more than one more glass, she drinks it because opening the evening with something few people know is a small, private luxury. She too has a profile: age, neighborhood, even what ends up in the basket next to it.

And here too, it isn’t the neighborhood that drives the purchase, but the fact that no one has quite caught on yet.

It was never about the wine.

Port was only the limit case, but the law it reveals reaches far beyond wine: white chocolate, meat, spirits… every product that in 2026 looks like “too much.”

In the age of moderation, categories survive by becoming more meaningful. Making a product meaningful can’t be improvised, it is done by understanding people deeply enough to know which moments are worth it for them and building those moments as you go. It’s work that starts from the person, from the why more than the what is being sold.

It’s exactly what we do at HCG. Because in the end, the question every brand should be asking shifts. Not ‘how do we make our product lighter, more modern, more in step with the times,’ but something far more uncomfortable: what are we the answer to?

*IWSR https://www.theiwsr.com/insight/growth-of-4bn-expected-from-no-alcohol-category-by-2028/

About The Author

Mattia De Nardi is a Junior Strategy Consultant at Human Centric Group, with a dual background in Food Science and Food & Wine Business (LUISS Business School), he brings a mix of technical product knowledge and commercial thinking. Previously, at Barilla Group, he co-led the development of a new bakery product from concept to launch. He has also worked in wine and retail operations in Australia and France, and is a certified AIS Sommelier.