Rival drinks
Wine Intelligence analyst Chuan Zhou noted that wine is increasingly losing market share to other drinks. These include craft beer and gin, the latter, Zhou noted “has become a remarkably vibrant and attention-grabbing category”.
The proportion of UK regular wine drinkers who say they also drink beer and gin has risen significantly in just a year, the report noted, increasing from 52% (beer) and 36% (gin) in 2017 to 63% (beer) and 44% (gin) in 2018.
Research by city law firm RPC published in October this year recorded a 20% surge in people registering trademarks for beers in the UK, with the number of beer trademarks in the UK doubling since 2010.
Meanwhile, sales of UK gin have doubled in value in the past five years with exports and domestic sales totalling £2.2 billion in the year ending 16 June 2018, according to the latest figures from the Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA).
Price
Zhou pointed to duty increases and negative currency movements as reasons why consumers are now having to spend more on wine. Tax on wine will rise alongside inflation, meaning punters will pay 7p more per bottle in 2019.
The report found that on average, in 2018, consumers have spent 30p per bottle more for at-home drinking and 50p more in the on-trade, compared to the previous year. It revealed that £8.40 is the average spend on a bottle taken to “a formal dinner party” at home while £17.30 is spent on average on a bottle at a restaurant.
Zhou also noted that “during the last 12 months, an increased proportion of UK regular wine drinkers think ‘wine is an expensive drink’”.
