Global wine market on the up
Global wine consumption rose 0.5% last year to 2.4 billion nine-litre cases with the Premium-and-Above category growing 3.5% to 295.9 million cases, according to the IWSR’s recently-published Global Trends 2018 report. Europe holds the largest share of still wine sales at 57.3% while North America takes up 15.2% of total sales and Asia Pacific 11.3%.
But in Europe generally, wine continues its downward trend in countries like France and Germany as well as the UK where value is generally increasing at the expense of volume.
Italy, the US and Spain are the only countries showing sales volume growth at 2.9%, 0.9% and 0.3% respectively.
Other countries such as the UK show a 2.6% decline in volumes while outside Europe, Argentina shows a 2.2% decline, China a 1.6% decline and France a 1.2% decline overall.
The largest growth in volume emanates from the Italian market which is receiving a boost from millennial consumers there “who’re reportedly drinking more wine than their parents,” according to the report.
“In the UK, overall volumes suffered as consumers transitioned over to other categories, notably gin, although the value of the market still performed well due to a mix of price inflation and the trend towards drinking less but better,” states the IWSR, “Affordable Spanish and Chilean wines saw the largest increase in volume outside of their domestic markets, while premium-and-above French, Australian and New Zealand wines dominated growth at the higher end of the export market largely driven by increased consumption in China. Wine is the current hot category with younger consumers in China, who perceive it as modern, fashionable, healthy and sophisticated and there is strong demand for wine education.”
The report also addresses the rosé category which is “experiencing much of the healthiest growth across the global market thanks to the ubiquity of ‘millennial pink’. A host of new launches has helped raise rosé’s profile and boost volumes in the comparatively small colour segment. The refreshing and easy-to-drink nature of rosé wines has helped to recruit new consumers in markets such as Spain, South Africa and Peru”.
Finally, alternative packaging innovations such as wines in cans, innovative new releases such as cross-category Bourbon barrel-aged red wine and the growing popularity of rosé wines figure among the factors that have positively impacted the wine market, states the report.
“The now widespread availability of canned wines and the level of new product development in this area has helped the still wine category enter new occasions as it can travel places glass containers cannot.”