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Focus
On Beer & Wine
WINE
After a
spectacular 25 years of rising wine consumption in Britain, sales
have now gone into decline.
New research
by market analysts reveals that wine-quaffing in the UK has risen
solidly every quarter of a year since the early 1980s, with the
British love affair with the noble grape showing no signs of diminishing.
A
traditionally beer and spirits-drinking island has been turned into
the most dynamic and important wine market in the world. |
But new
figures show that wine consumption has ground to a halt just below
the 92 million case mark and is now in shallow decline.
In the first
16 weeks of 2005, Britain drank 313 million bottles of wine. But in
the same period this year, just 308 million bottles were downed - a
fall of 1.5%. That translates to five million bottles and an awful
lot of imbibing.
So far,
analysts say it is too early to draw conclusions on what has caused
the decline, but many in the industry fear that a combination of
rising fuel prices and growing consumer debt has led many drinkers to
start tightening their belts.
The statistics
have sent shockwaves through the British wine industry, which was
forecasting that consumption trends would continue upwards. Stewart
Blunt, the wine analyst at AC Nielsen, which carried out the
research, said: "This is a real wake-up call for the wine
industry. Historically, the market has risen in every quarter in
living memory, and now it has gone flat.
"Minus
1.5% may not seem like a huge decline, but put it against its
historical context and the expected projections, which were about 2%
to 3% growth in the first quarter of 2006, then it is a very
significant shift. Perhaps we [Britain] have reached a point of
saturation and 92 million cases is all we can drink a year."
Britain's
transformation into a nation of wine drinkers began in the 1970s,
with the domestic craze for German brands such as Blue Nun and
Liebfraumilch. By the early 1980s, New World wines from Australia,
New Zealand, South America, California and certain parts of Europe,
providing affordable, good-quality, easy-drinking wine, were
expanding the market away from French and German territory.
By the
mid-1990s, wine was big business. Dull, gassy, chemical-tasting beer
was taking a back seat to luscious, vanilla-flavoured, fruity wine.
Suddenly a new generation of consumers, who had grown up drinking in
wine bars, adopted the practises of the upper classes, drinking two
or three bottles of wine a week.
Although beer
consumption in the UK is still higher overall, the gap is rapidly
closing. The average adult annual consumption of wine is now just
below three gallons, compared with 2.46 gallons in 2000. France still
tops the consumption league with 12.8 gallons.
It is a very
strange situation when the beer market has admitted being under
increasing pressure from wine and many restaurants are trying to
emulate the wine-drinking style by running beer and food matching
menus. If no sector is growing it only points to a sudden change in
social habits or the belt tightening that many fear. A more
optimistic view is that 2006 figures are merely adjusting for the
considerable growth experienced in 2005.
American Growth
Americans,
however, will replace the French as the world's biggest wine drinkers
within three years according to new research.
The report
from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) claims
that French wine consumption dropped 2% between 2004 and 2005, while
British wine consumption rose 5% in 2005. Britain and the United
States are the world's two fastest growing wine markets.
The United
States is to become the world's biggest wine drinking nation, the
authors conclude. Consumption in the United States grew 3% in 2005
and if this trend continues, the US will oust France from the top
spot within three years.
French wine
exports fell 11% between 2002 and 2005, while Spanish wine exports
increased by 47%.
Global
consumption grew by 0.1% to 23.56bn litres between 2004 and 2005.
Further
evidence of the huge growth in the wine market in the United States
was provided recently by a study from the Wine Market Council (WMC),
a nonprofit wine-industry trade group.
According to
the WMC's latest trend survey, Americans drank a record 243m cases of
wine in 2004 and average per capita consumption hit a record 2.77
gallons (10.5 litres).
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