Loyalists and explorers are better understood as buying modes than as fixed customer types. The same person may want reassurance for a familiar dinner and discovery on a cellar-door visit. Producers therefore need a two-speed commercial system: a stable anchor range that is easy to recognise and reorder, plus a controlled discovery layer that rewards curiosity without making the brand incoherent. The two modes require different products, messages, channels and measures of success.
The wine-club email promises continuity: the bottle members loved is back, and allocations open on Tuesday. The tasting-room board promises the opposite: a new parcel, a new variety, one weekend only. Both messages may go to the same database. That is not necessarily confused marketing. It may be an accurate description of the customer.
Producers often divide buyers into loyalists, who want the familiar, and explorers, who chase novelty. The distinction is operationally useful and strategically dangerous. People change modes with the occasion, the channel, the price and their confidence. Someone can reorder the same case for home while choosing the least familiar glass on a restaurant list.
The same customer can play both roles
Recent evidence supports curiosity, but it does not justify turning age groups into personality types. IWSR consumer data published in 2024 found that 73% of US Millennial regular wine drinkers said they regularly enjoyed trying new or different styles, compared with 58% of regular wine drinkers overall. The same group also reported higher frequency and spend. Exploration, in other words, did not exclude commercial commitment. The finding is US-specific and describes a cohort tendency, not a universal rule.
Purchase data gives the issue another useful twist. A 2022 study in Food Quality and Preference analysed the revealed purchases of 8,313 Italian households and found several distinct patterns. Its largest group showed greater diversity across wine types than across brands; overall, variety seeking was more widespread for wine typologies than for brands. That suggests a buyer can roam through grapes, denominations or styles while remaining relatively loyal to a producer or brand. The study is Italian, so the segment proportions should not be exported casually. The strategic implication travels better than the percentages.
The mistake is to build two demographic caricatures: the older loyalist who dislikes change and the younger explorer who never returns. A more useful question is what job the customer wants the wine to do today. Is the purchase reducing risk, repeating a pleasure, marking an occasion, learning something or creating a small surprise? The answer can change before the customer does.
Build an anchor and a discovery layer
A portfolio built for loyalist mode needs anchors. These wines should be recognisable, available on a dependable rhythm and consistent in the way that matters to the buyer. Consistency does not mean pretending vintages are identical. It means explaining the change without making the customer relearn the proposition. Stable labels, clear vintage-transition notes and a frictionless reorder path are part of the product, not administrative decoration.
Explorer mode needs a discovery layer: rotating parcels, less familiar varieties, library releases, experimental formats or collaborations that are visibly related to the core brand. Novelty alone is not a proposition. The customer needs a reference point - what changed, why it is worth attention and how it connects to something already understood. 'New' is a date stamp. 'The same site, picked earlier and bottled without oak' is a reason to compare.
Packaging should make those roles legible. Reworking the anchor label every vintage may delight the design team while taxing recognition at shelf and cellar door. At the other extreme, giving a trial wine exactly the same visual treatment as the core range hides the point of difference. Keep family codes, then signal the departure. An explorer should spot what is new without wondering whether it belongs to you.
Price and access need the same discipline. Loyal customers rarely need permanent discounts; they may value predictable release windows, priority allocation, useful shipping terms or recognition of tenure. Explorers need low-friction trial through mixed cases, tasting pours or smaller commitments. Discounting every unfamiliar SKU teaches customers to wait. Forcing a full case teaches them not to experiment.
There is a cost to serving both. Too much stability can make a range feel closed and leave acquisition dependent on an ageing customer base. Too much novelty fragments inventory, complicates production, burdens sales teams and makes the brand difficult to remember. The discovery layer needs a limit, a calendar and a commercial purpose. The winemaker's curiosity is not automatically the customer's reason to buy.
Sell the mode, not the demographic
Communication should follow behaviour rather than birthdays. A customer who repeatedly buys one estate wine should receive availability, vintage continuity and replenishment prompts. A customer who moves across the range needs comparison, context and early notice of rotation. Sending every release to everyone is not personalisation; it is a larger mailing list. Useful segmentation can begin with purchase breadth, reorder interval and response to new releases, without pretending the data reveals a complete human being.
Hospitality can make the distinction explicit with one simple choice: would the guest like the reference wine or something that departs from it? A flight can use an anchor as orientation and rotate the contrasts around it. In distribution, the dependable wines may suit broader retail and restaurant placements, while discovery releases often benefit from staff explanation, specialist retailers, by-the-glass exposure or the cellar door. These are tendencies, not laws. The point is to assign each channel a job.
Tourism and partnerships are especially useful bridges. A returning visitor can be recognised with depth - a new vintage, a library comparison, a parcel they have not tasted - rather than being marched through the introductory script again. A first-time visitor can encounter one clear signature before being offered the eccentric cousin. Discovery works better when it has a home address.
Measure the behaviour you actually want
Loyalist performance should be judged by full-price repeat rate, time between purchases, retention across vintages, club tenure and concentration risk. Explorer performance needs different measures: movement across the range, conversion from first to second purchase, participation in rotating releases, gross margin after small-run complexity and eventual migration toward an anchor. An explorer who never repeats a SKU may still be loyal to the producer. A club member who renews automatically but has stopped opening emails may be less secure than the membership count suggests.
This matters because relationship channels now carry enormous weight for many producers. Silicon Valley Bank's 2026 US direct-to-consumer survey of 450 family wineries reported that tasting rooms and wine clubs accounted for 72% of winery DTC performance, while results varied sharply according to how wineries built and maintained customer relationships. The evidence is US-specific, but the commercial lesson is broader: a relationship is not created by sending more messages. It is created by recognising which promise the customer is buying.
Do not ask whether your business serves loyalists or explorers. Ask which mode each wine, channel and communication is designed to serve, and what should move a customer from one to the other. Loyalists need a reason to return. Explorers need a reason to continue. The strongest portfolios let the same person do both without losing the thread of the brand.
Sources used
IWSR, 'Key trends for the US wine market in 2024', 25 March 2024.
Silicon Valley Bank, 2026 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Report.
Source note: IWSR and SVB findings are US-specific. The household purchase study is Italian. The article uses them as evidence of behaviour, not as universal market shares.
