Wine Sales Continue Upward Trajectory For Second Straight Month, Outpace Past 52-Week Growth by 30%

Wine sales have scored their second straight month of  significant sales increases, outpacing the overall revenue growth of the past 52 weeks by approximately 30 percent. Sparkling wine and Champagne more than tripled its growth rate.

For the four-week period ending Feb. 22,, table wines sold through U.S. food and drug stores have increased 6.6 percent according to a Wine Business Insight analysis of data from Information Resources, Inc. (IRI).

This continues the dramatic reversal in wine sales as first reported by WII on Feb 6 when overall sales jumped 6.4 percent.

By contrast, table wine sales for the 52-week period ending Feb. 22 showed a 4.6% increase.

Champagne and sparkling wine sales performed even better with an 8.9% increase for the four week period versus a 2.4 percent increase over the previous 52 weeks.

[NOTE: A downloadable Excel spreadsheet (13 columns by 287 rows) containing  the source data used for this article as well as other information  is available here to VIP Subscribers]

ALL PRICE POINTS GAIN DOLLAR VOLUME, BUT BOXES STILL  RULE

As expected, lower-price-point box wines scored the biggest gains with box wines costing less than $2 for a 750ml equivalent posting a 41.5 percent gain. However, wines costing $8 to $10.99 a bottle came in third with a 9.2 percent gain. The “Two Buck Chuck” category, costing less than $3 a bottle gained 9 pecent, for fourth place.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the most expensive wines in IRI’s data — those priced at more than $20 a bottle — came in after Two Buck Chuck, growing at the rate of 7.1 percent.

IMPORTS VERSUS DOMESTIC

Despite a strengthening of the dollar versus the Euro and most other currencies, imports hung on to their market share, barely slipping from 29.71 percent for the past 52 week  to 29.45 percent for the four-week period.

DOMESTIC SPARKLERS RULE SHELVES

Domestic sparkling wines increased13.3 percent over the four-week period,far outpacing  imports which showed a 1.6 percent increase. This disparity is accounted for by a 19.4 percent increase in sparking wines below $4.99 a bottle, followed by 14.1 percent growth for those in the $8 to $12.99 category.

Imports, which tend to outprice domestic sparklers, fared badly. Bottles over $36 were down 10 percent and those prived at $18 to $34.99, lost 1.5 percent.

NEXT INSTALLMENT

• Which brands fared the best?
• Surprising data on which varietals are selling best … and worst.
• Top 10 biggest percent sales leaders, all imports

Those and a lot more surprising numbers are in that VIP Excel File. If you want a crack at the answers first, then you may want to subscribe. For $5.99 you can slice and dice, sort and resort the numbers in every way possible.

The charts in this article are a small portion of what is in the Excel file which, itself, is a small part of the data available from IRI.