The latest wine consumption data from IWSR for 2023 and forecasts to 2028 have been recently released. Wine Australia has updated its newly re-designed Market Explorer with this data and this Market Bulletin will not only give an overview of the latest trends but also step you through how to use the tool.
Latest global wine consumption trends
The latest data release from the market research company IWSR reveals that, although global wine consumption has declined over the last five years, a slightly more stable picture lies ahead. While wine consumption declined by 3 per cent per annum between 2018 and 2023 – from 2.7 to 2.4 billion 9-litre cases (a loss of 350 million cases) – this rate of decline is expected to ease in the next five years – to a 1 per cent decline per annum to 2028 (a loss of around 100 million cases). However, while value has increased by an average of 1 per cent per year in the last five years – it is expected to be flat over the next five at around US$192 billion (see Figure 1).
Driving these figures are expected slower rates of volume decline in markets such as the United States, Italy, Germany, and France. Meanwhile, value growth has slowed, or even started to decline, in markets such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia. While the Chinese wine market has been one of the largest drivers of both volume and value decline between 2018 and 2023 – it is expected to start making a recovery over the next five years – particularly in value.
Figure 1: Volume and value of global wine consumption
Source: IWSR
Commercial wine consumption (below US$10 per bottle retail) has declined by 3 per cent on average per year since 2018 and this decline is forecast to continue – but at a lesser rate of 1 per cent per year to 2028. This segment of the market is the primary driver of decline in global wine consumption. Premium wine consumption (above US$10 per bottle retail) had been growing until 2022 and 2023 – where consumption in this price segment weakened slightly due to the global cost of living crisis. Fortunately, this segment is expected to recover somewhat in the next five years – growing by 1 per cent per annum on average (see Figure 2). However, it is important to note that this growth in premium wine does not make up for the loss in volume sold in the commercial wine segment.
Figure 2: Volume of commercial vs premium wine consumption
Source: IWSR
Using the Market Explorer to analyse opportunities for Australian wine
The Market Explorer is an online analysis tool, originally released in 2019, built for Australian wine producers and exporters to assess which wine markets offer the best opportunities for Australian wine. In 2024, Wine Australia has re-designed this tool to bring it into line with Wine Australia’s other dashboards. Below are a few ideas and suggestions on how to use this tool to explore the latest trends in global wine markets.
Market opportunities
The Market Explorer opens on the ‘Market opportunities’ page, which displays the top 40 most attractive wine markets (according to IWSR) and positions them on a chart according to their relative growth in the value of imports – both historical and forecast. The size of the bubble indicates the size of the imported wine market. The United States is positioned in the top right corner – indicating higher historical and forecast growth – and due to the size of the market, also has the biggest bubble. Other markets in this top right-hand corner include South Korea, Brazil, Sweden, Australia, and Mexico. The top left-hand corner is dominated by Asian markets – which are generally smaller – and therefore have had a smaller amount of historical growth. However, these markets – including mainland China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, Singapore, and Vietnam – also have a high potential for growth in the forecast period.
Figure 3: Size and growth of imported wine markets
Source: IWSR and Wine Australia analysis, available in the Market Explorer
Market snapshot
If you would like to explore any of the above markets in greater detail, the ‘Market snapshot’ page is your next step. This page displays a variety of wine market characteristics, economic indicators, and long-term trends (see Figure 4) that give a broad overview of a particular wine market. Using mainland China as an example, the insights that can be obtained from this page include:
- Adult per capita consumption in 2022 and 2023 was 0.2 litres per person per year, down from 1.1 litres per year in 2017.
- In 2022 only 18 per cent of wine was consumed in the on-premise – this recovered to 30 per cent in 2023.
- The volume of wine consumed has declined by 20 per cent on average each year between 2018 and 2023. This rate of decline is expected to ease to 1.5 per cent per year in the next five years.
- While the wine market is expected to decline – the imported share of the market is expected to increased from 43 per cent in 2023 to 51 per cent in 2028.
Figure 4: Market snapshot page – mainland China
Market comparison
The ‘Market comparison’ page enables users to compare markets on a variety of different indicators – including wine consumption, growth, imports, Australia’s share of imports, the size of the beverage alcohol market, and average retail price. The table can be sorted by clicking on the relevant column header and the statistics can be viewed by both volume and retail value. In the screenshot below, the table is sorted by forecast growth – revealing that Spain, South Korea, Portugal, Poland, and Sweden are forecast to grow the most in volume over the next five years.
Figure 5: Market comparison page sorted by forecast growth
Market competition
The ‘Market competition' page provides the opportunity for users to analyse not only the competitors within a wine market, but also top markets where the wine of a selected country is sold.
For example, when viewing the report by the ‘market of consumption’ the source countries competing for market share in a market are displayed – as well as how sales are broken down by price segment and imported versus local wine’s share of the market. When switching to ‘country of wine production’, key characteristics of a wine producing country are shown – such as top markets, how much of production is exported and at which price points the wine is sold – both domestically and exported. For Australian wine, the page reveals 57 per cent of sales are exported, and 66 per cent of exports are sold in the “standard” price segment (US$5 to US$9.49 per bottle retail).
Figure 6: Market competition page filtered on Australia as a wine producer
If you would like training on any of Wine Australia’s data resources, please contact the Market Insights team through the Ask an Analyst service or email at market.insights@wineaustralia.com.