When Erika Veurink was planning her wedding, she knew she wanted the reception to be at Saucedgstar28, a wine bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, known for blasting hip-hop and its disco-ball-adorned dance room.
That Ms. Veurink didn’t really drink did not matter.
Though she doesn’t describe herself as sober, Ms. Veurink, a 28-year-old freelance fashion writer, stopped drinking about six months before her wedding, held in the fall of 2022. By then, she and her then-fiancé had spent lots of time at Sauced, which opened in January 2020.
Ms. Veurink was born in 1996, putting her on the cusp between millennials, the cohort born between 1981 and 1996, and Generation Z, the group born between 1997 and 2012. They’re not known to be a boozy bunch: Some studies have shown that members of Gen Z drink less than the generation of millennials born before them, and that some millennials also drink less than members of older generations. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 viewed having one to two drinks a day as bad for their health, compared with 39 percent of Americans between 35 and 55, and 26 percent of Americans 55 and older.
But for some young adults like Ms. Veurink, drinking less or not at all has not stopped them from developing a taste for wine, particularly natural varieties, its culture and the bars that serve it.
“It felt like we knew them,” Ms. Veurink said. She and her now-husband liked the bar’s atmosphere, too: “It is truly a gorgeous space with a stunning French waitstaff,” she added.
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