Looking at supermarket shelves packed with wines from all over the globe, have you ever wondered what wines are the most popular?
The Irish Wine Market Report for 2023, compiled by Drinks Ireland makes for interesting reading. It is compiled using figures supplied by the Revenue Commissioners and shows how our tastes are changing year by year.
We drink 30 per cent less alcohol than we did 20 years ago – a good thing as we were among the biggest consumers in the world back then. We still drink more beer (43 per cent of alcohol consumption) than anything else, but wine is slowly becoming more popular – 28 per cent of overall alcohol consumption, up almost 6 per cent on 2022. This followed a fall-off in sales in 2021 and 2022. Our excise duties are the second highest in Europe (after Finland) for still wine and by far the highest for sparkling wine.
We drink roughly the same amount of red and white wine, a little more white (48 per cent of consumption) compared with 44 per cent red wine and 7 per cent rosé. European wines have 41 per cent of the market, the rest of the world 59 per cent. Sales from outside of Europe are largely driven by two countries – Chile and Australia.
Chile is the most popular wine-producing country with 23 per cent of the market in Ireland, selling more than 27 million bottles of wine. This is not really surprising as Chile produces large quantities of well-made inexpensive wine. Our favourite wine is the Santa Rita 120 sauvignon blanc which comes from Chile. Spain comes in second place with 13.5 per cent of the market, followed closely by Australian with 13.1 per cent. However, sales of Spanish wine have increased from three million bottles to an impressive 15 million bottles since 2000. Australia, on the other hand has seen a slight decrease. Sales of Spanish wine have been driven by Rioja and Albariño, two of our favourite wines. At the same time, the range and quality of other Spanish wines has improved out of all recognition.
The other big mover upwards has been New Zealand wines, driven by our love of Marlborough sauvignon blanc, augmented by an increase in sales of pinot noir. New Zealand accounts for only 7.7 per cent of the total wine market though.
What of Italy and France, the two giants of world wine production? We still like French wine, buying about 12 million bottle every year, roughly the same as 20 years ago. These figures do not include wines imported on annual “booze cruises” to France. Although Italian wine sales have trebled in the same period, they still only amounted to 11.3 million bottles in 2023, so plenty of room for improvement.
All of these figures are based on sales by volume and not by price. I would suspect the average price of French wine, which would include Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux, is far higher than that of Chilean, for instance, if you calculate sales in euro.
Sadly, the report doesn’t include figures for the rise in popularity of alcohol-free wines and beers, as these are of no interest to the Revenue Commissioners, nor does it show how much sparkling wine we buy.
