Follow up to my last post about wine sales decline accelerating…just seeing how people are feeling heading into the holidays?
Feels like things are getting worse?
by TheDealingLeague
Follow up to my last post about wine sales decline accelerating…just seeing how people are feeling heading into the holidays?
Feels like things are getting worse?
by TheDealingLeague
18 Comments
Sales may be getting worse, which I bad news for the people here who work in the industry but it’s not bad news for everyone here who enjoys wine and other spirits.
It’s not like the best wines are going to stop being made, they’re just going to cost less. Same with Whiskey, Rum, Tequila, etc.
There’s no way the Covid alcohol boom was sustainable. So much alcohol has doubled in price, it was insane how fast prices went up
I used to drink a glass or two of wine a night. I now drink a glass or two of wine a week.
I’m okay with this if wines get cheaper. I do feel bad for the industry though, but prices were out of control.
Biggest casualties seem to be teeny tiny wineries without a large following which I am buying for cheap on winebid. Burg and champagne dropping quickly as well. Obviously the last EP was a disaster. Good time to be a buyer.
Prices have gotten stupid so I for one applaud hearing this
Prices have gotten absurd. I’ve seen so many brands I love having doubled in price in the last few years. I quit buying from a ton of places.
Bring Tignanello back to 90 bucks once again
When demand went crazy so did prices (remember new car sales post-covid)? The costs to produce wine have gone up and some of that I hope will settle down. The other part of it was, as an economics prof of mine often said, “Make hay while the sun shines.” Well, it’s partly cloudy now, so it would be great some of the stupid price increases went away.
I’m all for it. Let the prices drop to something we can afford.
As someone on the distribution side, it isn’t all good for the consumer.
As sales drop distributors are tightening their belts and cutting slower movers. This means a lot of smaller, boutique brands will disappear out of many markets.
With the decline in sales, some vineyards are being replanted to different crops or torn up to use the land in some other way. This will have a long lasting impact on the availability and pricing of future wines.
So, enjoy as some prices reset, but also understand there will be some negatives as well. Be on the lookout for closeout deals in stores known for end of bin type sales. As distributors decide to dump stock it may be your last opportunity to get some of those items locally.
Personally, I drank like a fish during the lockdown part of the pandemic out of stress and boredom, then drank like an only slightly less thirsty fish up through 2023 or so just because I was in the habit of it and I was justifying a lot of it as a wine hobby. It took til 2024 for me to cut back to any significant degree, and now that my body has readjusted and I’m not in the same habits anymore, I go more days without having a drink at all. What wine I do buy, I go through slower, and as my mind focuses more on other things, I want to prioritize spending my money on other things, rather than defaulting to “let’s go buy some fancy wine” every time I have some spending money burning a hole in my pocket.
And yes, like everyone else in this thread, the prices are very much an issue for me as well. But I wonder, looking at what a boom for alcohol sales COVID was and thinking about how long cycles of heavy drinking and alcohol dependency take to wax and wane in a person, if there aren’t a lot of other consumers out there who are in basically the same boat as me on this, coming naturally to a point of ‘drying out’ a little after the pandemic gave us an excuse for three or four inordinately booze-soaked years.
Wine is, and will be, deflating in price. Find bargains!
This is feeling like a make-or-break season for larger distributors. The [bloodbath at SGWS](https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2024/10/biggest-us-wine-distributor-slashes-staff) has buyers worried about the big boys transitioning to tele-sales only and more keen to work with field reps. I expect something similar will happen to RNDC; Breakthru has too-big-to-fail vibes so I think they’ll be alright. I’m with a small distributor and our national plus DSD sales in CA and NY are keeping us in an expansionist direction, adding new products and courting new partners; we also have Beaujolais Nouveau (Dubouef) landing in three weeks and that’s always a healthy revenue boost.
My feeling is everyone is holding their breath until the election. Come November 6th there’ll be lots of people ready to celebrate and lots of people ready to drown their sorrows. Inflation concerns are still real but not as poignant as they were in spring and summer, but holiday deals will get general consumers back in a spending mood, keen to turn the page on 2024 and embrace 2025 with renewed spirits.
From an indie bottle shop perspective I had, sales in 2022 had dipped. 2023 was looking bad and I jumped out mid year to pivot elsewhere in the industry or adjacent. And this was in a city where people like to drink. If you didn’t sock away capital from 2020-2022 as small time off premise retailer, you might be hurting now is what I’m hearing.
A caveat I do see a number of indie or family run shops really drop the ball on wine curation and new owners have jumped into the retail space with no idea what they’re doing, which will accelerate their struggles.
The drop in COVID-era drinking; savvy consumers running away from brands once they get bought up by private equity; and Gen Z drinking so much less than millennials—it’s going to guarantee a market bloodbath. I hope things settle out in the next few years. My heart goes out to everybody in the distribution and sales business but it’s rough on consumers, too. So many of my favorite champagnes have gone from $90/bottle to $250; I feel like I’ve had to get more educated on the industry than I’ve ever intended just because the wines I like keep getting absurdly expensive and I need to find new ones.
Sales of wine in China, the grear hope of Australian and South American wineries, are down 25%. The biggest problem is growing disinterest amongst young people
I think it’s important to mention that Covid brought an alcohol boom, and a good portion of this decline is just a return to normalcy.
I’ve noticed the bottom fall out of fine wine in the last few months. I really had to stop buying late last year and many of the bottles I took a pass on are still there (just more dusty) and cheaper.