Cork Finished Wines Outsell Alternative Closures

By Peter Weber, Cork Quality Council
Special to Wine Industry Insight

I was recently looking at IRI wine sales figures on your site and after sorting the brands by their predominant closure type, I found some confirmation to the anecdotal reports that “fighting varietals” finished with cork products seem to be doing better than those brands finished with alternative closures.

Of the top 50 Wine brands for the 4-week period ending 7/12/09, those finished with cork closures show average volume increases of 9.9% over the same period year ago.

Brands with Synthetic closures were relatively flat – up 0.4% and brands with screwcaps declined by -1.7%.

Cork finished brands enjoyed a pricing advantage of $1.70 per equivalent bottle over the alternative closures. Revenue per case was 32% higher for cork finished wines than the average of wines finished in synthetics and screwcaps.

These tendencies were more apparent when selecting brands with scanned revenue above $75/case.

In this category, cork finished wines registered growth of 9.3% by volume compared to a loss of -6.9% for wines finished in alternative closures (all synthetic).

Of course, you cannot draw a conclusive root cause from this pattern. There are many factors involved with sales growth or decline.

However, it is interesting to note that this pattern has been visible all year. When looking at similar brands at 4 weeks, 12 weeks, 26 weeks and 52 weeks – the disparity between performance of Top 50 Brands with revenue >$75/cs appears to be steadily intensifying.

Cork finished brands have shown steady growth while the average of brands bottled in alternatives has shown deeper declines at every measurement interval.

Consumer research has consistently revealed strong consumer preference for cork closures over alternatives.

Several studies* have conclusively shown that consumers perceive cork finished wines to have higher quality and value than the same wine with non-cork finishes.

Though the recent pattern of performance for Top Fifty wines might be an aberration, it could also indicate that consumers are taking the closure into consideration when making purchasing decisions in these competitive times

ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

*Marin, A.B.,Durham,C.A.. 2007. Effects of Wine Bottle Closure Type on Consumer Purchase Intent and Price Expectation. Am. J. Enol. Vitic. 58:192-201

*Marin, A.B., E.M. Jorgensen, J.A. Kennedy, and J. Ferrier. 2007. Effects of bottle closure type on Consumer perception of wine quality. Am. J. Enol. Vitic. 58:182-191.

*Penn,C., Independent Consumer Research on Closures. WIne Business Monthly – April 2007