According to a survey by the China Wine Association, 25 percent of college students in China don't drink wine, mainly because they don't like the taste.

The survey targeted more than 60 colleges and universities, including comprehensive, professional and normal colleges, and the number of valid questionnaires reached 8,116. The proportion of men and women is almost 40%, and the proportion of people aged 18-25 is as high as 97.6%. College students located in central and eastern regions accounted for 62%, and non-first-tier cities accounted for 83%.

Beer (22.81%), cider (15.47%) and whiskey (15.47%) ranked the top three, while wine was only chosen by 14.55%, higher than cocktail (13.15%) and liquor (8.78%). This shows the challenges facing the wine industry: despite its cultural reputation, wine lags behind more accessible and culturally entrenched alcoholic beverages.

Survey results show that 58.6% of college students are wine white, often drink wine only accounted for 3% of the surveyed students, up to more than 70% rarely drink or occasionally drink, a quarter of college students never drink wine.

As for the reasons why college students don't like wine, In order, they do not like the taste of sour (18.9%), do not understand wine at all (14.8%), do not have a dining scene (12.9%), are expensive (12.3%), people around them do not drink (9%), physical reasons such as alcohol allergy (7%), other (6.9%), inconvenient purchase (6%), and inconvenient drinking (5%).

The perception that wine is an old-fashioned business drink used for socializing has alienated younger drinkers. A college student pointed out that in her and her classmates' eyes, wine and liquor are the same, and they feel that they are only drunk by business people between 30 and 40 years old, which is a social wine. It's a bit old to ask for wine in a group.

However, for those respondents who prefer wine, being slightly tipsy, relieving stress, improving self-taste, and liking the flavor and culture of wine add up to more than 50 percent of the reasons for drinking wine, and only 13 percent of college students choose parties and drinks together.

In terms of wine region preference, France tops the list with 29.53%, followed by Italy (17.67%) and Spain (10.81%). It can be seen that the old world is more likely to be favored by people because it has a longer history of wine. Interestingly, Chinese wine is increasingly popular, ranking fourth at 11.08%, higher than many New World wine producing countries.

When college students buy wine, 53.8% of them choose traditional large supermarkets, 48% choose professional wine exhibitions, and 44% choose wineries directly. Despite the rapid development of e-commerce, only 30% of respondents choose platform e-commerce and only 25% choose distributors. This shows that people still trust brick-and-mortar stores and established e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Tmall to avoid fake products.

Whether through supermarkets or e-commerce platforms, college students clearly prefer fidelity channels, a trend further underscored by the rise of Hema and Sam's Club, which are known for offering wines sourced directly from producers.

According to the survey, for wines priced between 50 yuan and 150 yuan, and between 150 yuan and 300 yuan, college students attach great importance to brand awareness, with 59 percent ranking it first. This suggests that trust from brand reputation is more important than other factors, such as professional ratings (5%), awards (1%), professional referrals (2%) and advertising (0.78%), which receive less attention.