The Post-Recessionary Wine Market is Here

Shipments Wine, or at least the high end of the wine market, finds itself in a post-recessionary phase.

This is the only message one could take from the ShipCompliant/Wines & Vines presentation given yesterday at the ShipCompliant Direct Shipping Seminar and Users Conference

For the 12 months ending April 2011, the volume and value of wines shipped from winery to consumer is up 11.5 percent. This is in contrast to the overall American wine retail market that, according to IRA data appears to be up by about 5% for the same period.

You can Download the Presentation on Direct Shipments of wine HERE. You can read their press release HERE.

Lots of interesting and guiding data came out of the presentation that was given a the conference by Marc Varietal Engel. Among the most interesting is that if you look at direct shipping by varietal, Cabernet and Pinot Noir account for nearly 60% of the total value of all direct to consumer shipments, with Cabernet getting the lion's share of the total value at 41%.

But what I think is the real significant story outside of total volume and sales of direct shipped wine being up 11.5% is that wines originating from wineries in California but outside Napa and Sonoma increased 41% by volume and 38% by value over the previous 12 month period. That is a HUGE increase. Clearly wineries in the Central Coast and Mendocino County are being discovered, working hard and gaining lots of attention from serious wine buyers. This is very good news.

Location One other thing is clear about this increase in shipments from "other" parts of California: it's happening on the back of Pinot Noir and Cabernet. Shipments of Pinot Noir from wineries outside of Napa and Sonoma increased by 62%!! Cabernet shipments increased by 68%!!

There is A LOT more data on the presentation. I highly recommend looking at it.

Kudos to the folks at ShipCompliant for an outstanding conference. The rain was a bit of an inconvenience, but we are all getting used to that in this neck of the woods.

This study that ShipCompliant and Wines & Vines put together annually now is only going to get more and more interesting in the future and the data set for numerous years is accumulated. This kind of information is going to finally give direct marketers of wine the kind of professional window on what they do and give it to them in a way that can help guide them forward.


3 Responses

  1. TexaCali Ali - June 29, 2011

    Tom, I agree – this conference was very informative and well worth a foggy/rainy drive over to Napa for the day. Fantastic news for wineries who have incorporated a direct to consumer sales channel into their distribution mix. Thanks for sharing the slides!

  2. Tom - July 1, 2011

    Great news, I agree. But I’m leery of the data on the rest of the wine retail market, especially if they’re relying on Neilsen and scanning data — they miss the small shops and only get data from either really big outlets or supermarkets.

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