Wine Drinker argues that wine may face a long-term “replacement problem”. Although younger adults currently account for only a small share of wine consumption, they matter disproportionately because they will eventually replace today’s older, heavier wine drinkers. Drawing an analogy with government bonds, where maturing debt must continually be refinanced at current rates, it suggests that the wine market depends on new generations developing similar drinking habits to those they replace. If younger people, influenced by greater health awareness, alternative drugs and changing lifestyles, never acquire the same taste for wine as today’s older generations, then high-consuming cohorts will gradually disappear without equivalent successors, causing wine consumption to decline structurally rather than merely temporarily.