If you’re a millennial who loves wine, this might not come as a surprise to you. We, and by that I mean people aged 21 to 38, drank almost half the wine purchased in America last year. According to a survey by the Wine Market Council, millennials bought 159.6 million cases of wine last year, which is more than 40 percent of all wine consumed in the country in 2015. And we’re not talking about the bottom of the barrel, either.

More than 50 million litres of wine of the 130 million produced in Bulgaria in 2015 will go to exports, Agriculture and Food Minister Dessislava Taneva said on February 14 2016. Taneva was speaking a ritual vine-cutting ceremony at the Bessa Valley winery in the village of Ognyanovo in the Pazardzhik region on the day that Bulgaria marks the feast of Trifon Zarezan, dedicated to vineyard traditions.

The crowd at the Marlborough Wine and Food Festival was better dressed than ever this year, an organiser says. Wine Marlborough events manager Samantha Young said she had noticed more people dressing up this year, with a wide range of fashion statements on show. Last year was the first time the Fashion in the Vines competition had been judged via Instagram. Young said this had encouraged more people to take part in the competition, which included categories for best dressed babe, best dressed beau and best dressed duo.

Unpaid vineyard workers are coming to a Blenheim contractor nearly every day pleading for jobs after being ripped off by other companies. Focus Labour Solutions owner Craig Mill said most companies within the vineyard industry treated their workers well, but there was a small number of employers that continually broke labour laws. Those companies went through a large number of workers, who then talked about their experience on social media accentuating the extent of the problem.

Asia’s largest airline, China Southern, has for the first time added two WA wine labels to its menu on some international flights in a deal that could be expanded across its network. Wines from Margaret River’s Vasse Felix, owned by Paul Holmes a Court, and Fermoy Estate, owned by Perth brothers Aaron and John Young, will be served on 67 flights a week between China, Australia and New Zealand for two years from April.

New independent economic research commissioned by Wine Australia has found the Australian wine industry contributes $40.2 billion to the national economy. The Australian wine sector, defined as wine grape growing, winemaking and wine-related tourism in the report also supports 172,736 full and part-time jobs, most of which are located in regional Australia.

Curtin University has increased semester one’s intake for the Graduate Diploma in Oenology, thanks to a growing interest in wine production across Australia. The year 2015 “was a watershed year for Australian wine internationally” with the value of exports increasing 14 per cent to $2.1 billion, according to an export report prepared by Wine Australia, Australia’s statutory body for the grape and wine community.

Aussie wine traditionally puts on its best strides on Australia Day, and the word on the street after its showcase of 1,000-plus wines was that Oz has boomeranged back. Not that it actually went anywhere, unless you believed the naysayers. Forty golds at the most recent Decanter World Wine Awards is evidence that the Australian wine success story has remained consistent despite, admittedly, an Achilles’ heel of excessive discounting and a failure to communicate the value of its fine wines.

Millenials in the US don’t want as much wine as their parents and the Italians are losing touch with their vinous heritage, but Prosecco is a ‘weekday luxury’ that knows no bounds abroad and China is back in the game, according to a Vinexpo-sponsored report on world wine consumption trends. It is the second time inside one month that concerns have been raised within the wine trade about the US, the world’s largest wine consuming nation.

Three Hawke’s Bay winemakers have been adjudged by Master of Wine Bob Campbell to be among eight winemakers throughout the country he describes as “on the rise”. Campbell has produced a feature article for the upcoming issue of the international magazine Gourmet Wine Traveller where he has focused on what he called the rising stars across the New Zealand winemaking landscape. Rod McDonald of Rod McDonald Wines, Steve Skinner at Elephant Hill and Dermot McCollom at Stonecroft all made Mr Campbell’s list.