Many leading wine-consuming nations are drinking less: UK wine consumption was down 2.9% in 2023 compared to 2022; the USA was down 3% and Canada down 5.6%. Chinese wine consumption plummeted by 24.7%. France is about to pay wine-growers €4,000 per hectare to uproot some 30,000ha of vineyards, with a further 70,000ha targeted.
Australia had two years’ worth of wine in storage in mid-2023, looking for a buyer; while New Zealand, for long a star performer, saw its wine sales drop 24% in volume and 22% in value from July 2023 to January 2024. In July 2024, Pernod Ricard sold off its wineries (including Jacob’s Creek and Campo Viejo) to AWL, the consortium that had only just (in February 2024) salvaged Accolade Wines (Hardys, Echo Falls, Banrock Station) from what CEO Robert Foye described as ‘an unsustainable balance sheet’.
Nor is the fine-wine market immune. Josh Kassab of Farr Vintners describes it as ‘extremely challenging with an evident imbalance between buyers and sellers’, and the company cautions consignors: ‘Many of our current advertised listing prices are already uncompetitive in this changing market.’
Wine isn’t alone. The value of Scotch whisky exports tumbled by 18% in the first half of 2024; spirits giant Rémy Cointreau has in October 2024 reported its Americas sales falling by 22.8% in the second quarter, and global sales down by 15.9%; while US beer sales fell in 2023 to the lowest level since the 1970s, according to Brewers Association reports. Beer sales in the UK are, in 2023, 21% lower than the UK 2018 peak (Statista).
Are health messages behind these figures? Perhaps. The World Health Organisation announced in January 2023 that ‘No level of alcohol consumption is safe’ for our health, in a press release published in The Lancet Public Health; it suggested that ‘the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage’. Indeed? Then the risk of violent death starts from every child’s first breath, too. Catchy if disproportionate messages have a habit of infiltrating public consciousness – 65% of Americans aged 18-34 believe that even moderate drinking is bad for your health (Gallup). Reports suggest that innovative weight-loss drugs destroy the appetite for wine and other alcoholic drinks.
Fashion also plays a part. The most mysterious trend I’ve ever seen is that for No-Lo ‘beers, wines and spirits’: expensive and unsatisfying pastiches in a world with ample choice of delicious mineral waters, teas, coffees, fruit juices and smoothies. Just… why? Cannabis and herb infused drinks are mounting a challenge to wine and other alcoholic drinks, though it’s too soon yet to say how sustained it will be, or how subtle and culturally rich is the pleasure such drinks procure.
Cost, too, must be a factor. Post-Covid inflation collapsed spending power at a time when alcohol duties in the UK (for example) were soaring. Good wine is now an expensive treat; cheap wine rarely delicious. Climate change makes matters worse: Spain’s current wine crisis is caused not by declining domestic consumption but by drought. As I write, a tariff storm between the US and its trading partners is brewing.
It’s easy to be despondent – but remember how bad things have been in the past. Plague, war and famine decimated populations and emptied entire wine regions; phylloxera terminated European wine production for several decades; fraud and manipulation have often travestied this market.
Nothing, though, replaces wine. It’s beautiful, culturally rewarding and emotionally moving. It connects us to places on earth, to our dreams, to our ancestors. It’s been with us for 8,000 years; its quality has never been better. Along with firelight and song, wine is humanity’s oldest friend. This is a hard pass; but wine will endure.
In my glass this month
Few parts of Spain have been harder hit by drought than Catalonia, so the quality of the Històric Gran Reserva Brut Nature 2018 from Parés Baltà shows just how much is at stake in the struggle for climate mitigation. Calm, serenely composed aromas of wild grasses, citrus peels and sea breezes. A flavour of great purity and refreshment but ample allusive presence, too: salt and soil, lemon, dust and summer warmth. Bravo to the Cusiné family who craft this fine-value Cava.
