In October, Dom Pérignon hosted a party at the Brant Foundation in New York City’s East Village, thousands of miles from its home in the Champagne region of France. At the party, which celebrated Dom Pérignon’s partnership with the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the actresses Zoë Kravitz and Natasha Lyonne, the model Evan Mock and Raul Lopez, the designer of the subversive Luar fashion label, sipped Dom as they swayed to music from the Mudd Club habitué DJ Justin Strauss.

The Basquiat painting “In Italian,” a Neo-Expressionist work filled with gestural scribbles and stark images — faces, coins, dark creatures and cryptic words like “teeth” and “crown of thorns” — hung on one wall. Throughout the room were bottles of a limited-edition release culled from a 2015 Dom Pérignon vintage with labels that mirrored Basquiat motifs, including his signature crown in yellow overlaid in a way to suggest a connection between the artist’s work and Dom Pérignon’s own shield-shaped tag.

“I think people are looking for more than just the experience of consuming,” said Jacques Giraco, the managing partner at Dom Pérignon, speaking of his company’s decision to evoke the image of an artist synonymous with the gritty downtown scene in 1980s New York. “It becomes a total experience. It conjures emotion, and that creates a stronger link with the brand.”

The flirtation of art and alcohol isn’t new — think Andy Warhol and Absolut vodka in the 1980s — but it makes a lot of sense today, when many studies indicate that Gen Z is drinking less alcohol than previous generations. Moreover, a jittery economic landscape makes expensive wines and spirits feel like unnecessary splurges to many consumers. Partnerships like these give alcohol brands a fresh item to promote, but also, in the best circumstances, a way to impart a whiff of art world allure onto their tipples. A Basquiat could easily set you back many millions — $110.5 million, in one record-breaking 2017 auction — so a Basquiat-branded bottle of Dom, clocking in at $305, could be viewed as a downright steal.

“Younger consumers are just not engaging with alcohol as much,” said Marten Lodewijks, the president of the United States division of IWSR, a data firm that tracks the alcohol beverage industry. “So there’s a much bigger effort to come up with hooks to bring them in.”