Increasing preference for wine consumption in northern Europe

I have recently looked at: Long-term (mostly negative) trends in Nordic alcohol consumption. In particular, I have looked at current wine sales in some of the Nordic countries, with their government-owned alcohol retail monopolies (they are not big wine producers):

• Sweden
• Norway
• Finland

This week I will show you that their consumption does now focus more on wine rather than the more traditional beer (and spirits). These data come from the Annual Database of National Beverage Consumption Volumes and Expenditures, 1950 to 2015.

This first graph refers to beer intake per person (up to 2015). As you can see, since 2000 beer consumption as a percentage of total alcohol intake per year has been less than 50% and decreasing in the three Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), whereas in Finland (the fourth Nordic country) it has remained fairly flat and just above 50%.

For wine, on the other hand (in the next graph), per person consumption has been increasing since the 1970s, although it took a bit of a blow in Finland in 2000 (the Covid pandemic).

This Finnish phenomenon can be seen in the third graph to be a result of a burst in spirits consumption at that time — apparently the Millennium seriously affected the Finns! Otherwise, Finland and Denmark have had a fairly constant per person spirits consumption for quite some decades, whereas Sweden and Norway have shown a decrease.

In my previous posts I had a look at which wine–producing countries now do well in the Nordic wine retailers, noting that they fit in line with other European countries; that is, the wine producers France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, plus the USA. This changing preference does match their accession to the European Union (EU), with its free trade within a single market (Denmark 1973, Finland 1995, Sweden 1995).

Norway is not a member of the European Union, but is associated with it through the European Economic Area (EEA), which allows it access to the EU‘s single market (Norway–European Union relations). It has contemplated joining the EU several times.

Climate change and its effect on grape cultivation

Modern viniculture currently has two major threats: changing attitudes by generations towards wine consumption, and changing vineyards in response to climate change. The latter is properly part of viticulture, and I will look at it here.

This topic was something that was long addressed by Dr Richard Smart, who died recently (Richard Smart: the man who changed wine):

Smart addressed the impact of climate change on wine regions, suggesting that some areas might become too hot for certain grape varieties, necessitating adjustments in vineyard management and variety selection. He consulted to vineyards to help them adapt by taking measures such as finding suitable new grape varieties for their regions.

He was absolutely right; and this is now of particular concern in Europe: Why Europe is the world's fastest warming continent. Two recent research publications by Elizabeth M. Wolkovich have been more specific, at a global scale. The grapevine characteristics included in her scientific analyses are shown in the first figure.

The more detailed of her two articles looks at Uneven impacts of climate change around the world and across the annual cycle of winegrapes (PLOS Climate 539):

    Anthropogenic [human affected] climate change has uneven impacts across the globe and throughout the year. Such unevenness poses a major challenge for human adaptation, especially for agricultural and other managed systems.
     Here, we use recent phenological models with a dataset of mean phenology for over 500 cultivars (varieties) to estimate climatic changes in growing regions across the globe for a major perennial crop that has been highly affected by climate change: winegrapes.
     We examine a suite of grower-relevant metrics, including temperatures during budburst, throughout the growing season and temperatures and precipitation surrounding harvest. We find that climate change has impacted all regions, especially for heat metrics across the full growing season (GDD [see the below graph], maximum temperature and days above 35°C). By far the largest shifts, however, are in European regions, where the number of hot days (>35°C) and maximum growing season temperatures are several standard deviations higher than before significant anthropogenic climate change.
     Climate change impacts have thus been highly uneven across the world’s winegrowing regions and the impacts are variable across the growing season.

The other paper is a review article: The problem of terroir in the anthropocene (Harvard Data Science Review, 7-2). She is particularly concerned about the way in which climate change effects the characteristics that we usually associate with wine terroir. Note also that the Anthropocene is a term used to refer to the period of time during which humanity has become a planetary force of change:

     Climate is integral to the concept of terroir. With anthropogenic climate change, the terroir of the world's winegrowing regions is changing, and will continue to change for decades or centuries.
     Here I show how variety phenology — the timing of major growth and reproductive events including budburst, flowering, veraison, and harvest — is a critical component of terroir and one that is becoming increasingly mismatched due to climate change.
     The clearest signal of this shift comes from the earlier harvests of wine grapes over the last several decades with harvests 2–3 weeks earlier in France and other regions. These earlier harvests have reshaped the climatic profile under which berries ripen, leading to wines with higher alcohol and shifted phenolic and aromatic attributes.
     But these shifts also hint at a major way to adapt viticulture to climate change — through matching variety phenology to the current and future climates of established winegrowing regions. Here I show how variety phenology — the timing of major growth and reproductive events including budburst, flowering, veraison, and harvest — is a critical component of terroir and one that is becoming increasingly mismatched due to climate change. I outline how growers and researchers alike can leverage current and new data to help develop a framework to shift varieties with climate change.

So, the purpose of these two articles is to point a practical way forward, which we would be best advised to heed. What cultivar we grow where (and thus we value the subsequent wine) will need to be re-evaluated, sooner rather than later.

Increasing trend for reservation versus walk-in winery tastings

Last week I had a look at How much we pay to visit wineries, within the USA. There is also the matter of whether we need to book a reservation for that tasting, or whether we can just walk in unannounced. I look at that this week.

First, I have noted that I originally developed my wine interest via walk-in wineries, in Australia in the early 1980s, because winery tastings were usually free and without appointment — we could just drop in during business hours. Indeed, we can still do that in some parts of Australia, even today in these very different times.

This is important because, as the recent 2025 Tasting Room Survey Report notes:

In such turbulent times, it is advised to focus on what's within one's control. For wineries across the United States, the single most important source of sales and engagement is the tasting room. In a flat, fragmented and fluctuating U.S. wine market, the tasting room crowds may not be as dependable as years past, but gleaning sales from the visitors who do make it to wine country is that much more important.

The recent Silicon Valley Bank 2025 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Report also tackles this same topic, on pages 32–45, when it notes for the USA:

The most meaningful change in tasting room service styles during the 2010s was moving from walk-in standing bars to seated by-reservation tastings. The change lessened visitation numbers but increased the average order value. The question today is whether the ‘experience arms race’ has reached its peak. Only 26% of wineries exclusively offer by-appointment tastings, while 8% are exclusively walk-in. With declining visitation, the largest group of wineries, 66%, is opting for greater flexibility and offering both service styles.

These data are shown in the first graph (above).

Obviously, the fees charged for reserve tastings are pretty much double those of the standard fee, as shown in the second graph. More sadly, those fees have been continually increasing over the past 5 years. As Per Karlsson commented on my previous post:

The SVB analysis is really interesting. In some ways it is worrying, it shows a trend towards moving wine more and more towards a beverage for the rich (perhaps it is already - in particular in the US).

This point is emphasized when we look at the tasting fees charged, compared to the suggested retail price (SRP) of the wines produced by that winery, which we do in the third graph (below). Clearly, the more you pay (wine) then the more you pay (tasting).

Also, the lower is the SRP then the more likely it is that the winery provides walk-in tastings, as shown in the final graph (below). All of this also relates to the U.S. wine-producing region, as Napa and Sonoma charge above average fees (both standing and reserve), with Oregon, Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, Washington, etc charging below average.

As was recently noted: In a slower market, physical spaces are your biggest asset. In the modern on-line world, younger generations are showing a strong trend towards valuing their experiences above all else. So, the tasting experience is very important for modern wineries — after all, it cannot become digital. It was important back in My Day, too, of course. However, almost every survey shows that wine sales are declining, in both volume and dollars, and will continue to do so. We therefore need to connect to potential customers, and a tasting room is one way to do that — even in these different times, wine should still be fun, as well as a learning experience.