The most valuable wine brands over recent years

Things are a bit unsettled in the global wine world at the moment, for reasons of which you are presumably well aware. Instead of dealing with that, I thought that it might be more interesting to look at the value of the world’s most valuable wine companies / brands over the past few years. Some are up, some are down, and some are holding ground. Which are which?

The most recent data for wine brands come from Brand Finance for 2024. This company claims to have “the world’s largest database of brand valuations, with over 5,000 new valuations each year, supported by our own original consumer equity research.”

You can peruse a list of the wine data at VinePair for: The world’s 10 most valuable wine and champagne brands (2024). Given that title, it should surprise no-one that the four most valuable brands for 2024 are all from Champagne: Moët & Chandon, Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, and Dom Pérignon. Note that this refers only to individual brands, not to the conglomerates that own many of them (eg. Constellation, Pernod Ricard).

For our purposes here, though, we want to compare these 2024 data to the data for 2023. This I have done in the first graph. Each company is represented by a labeled dot — its value in 2023 is shown horizontally (in millions of $) and its value in 2024 vertically.

Clearly, the same four Champagne brands were at or near the top of the 2023 list as well. This should surprise no-one either, I guess, because France, as it often does with wine, leads the way.

More interestingly, there are only two large changes in value between the two years: Changyu has dropped significantly (second place to fifth place), and Yellow Tail has risen significantly (ninth place to seventh place).

Changyu is China’s century-old wine legend. Its drop in value has been noted in the media (Changyu brand value plummets 33% in a year):

This decline is likely due to the increasing competition from both domestic and international wine brands entering the Chinese market, which has put pressure on Changyu’s market position. Combined with weak financial performance over the past year, these factors have led to a decrease in Changyu’s brand value.

Yellow Tail, on the other hand, has become an Australian legend, developed by Casella Wines. The rapid worldwide success of this brand has been listed as a classic case study of what is referred to as a Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue Oceans are uncontested marketplaces; and it is claimed that the Casella brothers deliberately set out to make their own blue ocean: a fun and non-traditional wine that is easy to drink for everyone (Creating value on the vine). Indeed, it has subsequently been noted that retailers should: Range wines by colour rather than country of origin, which is another example of a consumer-friendly approach to wine retail. (That is, these days consumers think about wine from a style perspective.)

We should also look at the most valuable wine brands over several years. We can look at the 2021—2024 data in the second graph. We should note that Penfolds, Yellow Tail and Jacob’s Creek do not appear in the Top 10 for 2021 (Barefoot, Martini, and Concha y Toro appear, instead). Also, Beringer does not appear in the Top 10 for 2022 — its value for 2021 (not shown in the graph) was $300 million.

Note the rapid rise for Penfolds in 2023, and for Yellow Tail in 2024. Lindeman’s has had an erratic performance, up and down, as has Changyu. The wine industry is not always a static place to be, although the other six brands have been fairly steady through time.

Part of the problem here, of course, is global wine production (Champagne sales are slumping):

According to the latest macro analysis from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), an intergovernmental body providing guidance to the wine and grape-growing industry, overall global wine production is now at its lowest point since the turn of the millennium ... the overarching trend for the past 25 years is a clear line sloping downward. Perhaps more menacingly, global wine consumption itself has reached its lowest point since 1996, according to OIV estimates.

In concluding on a happier note, I should remind you that the commercial value of a brand is not its only value. For example, the first large winery complex that I ever visited, in my late teens, was Seppeltsfield, established in the Barossa Valley (South Australia) in 1851 by the Seppelt family. What is equally notable is that the wine my wife and I had with our barbecue the other day was Seppeltsfield Shiraz 2019 (and very nice it was, too). Now that (nearly 5 decades) is continuous value for you!

Search popularity versus the price of Australasian wines

I have sometimes looked at this topic: The relationship of wine price to wine-quality scores. However, that mostly involves the professionals (who provide the scores), not the public (ie. the rest of us). So, today I thought that I might look at web-search popularity of wines, instead. I have previously done this for: The world’s most expensive wines! However, that situation is not for most of us either!

Recently the idea has been raised that Australia and New Zealand might become a single wine zone (Reimagine the border of New World wine regions). Indeed, there is already a joint Australian & New Zealand Wine Industry Directory (2025 Wine Industry Directory released).  So, this might be an interesting topic for looking at search popularity. (I have previously looked at their wine production and consumption: Australia and New Zealand wine comparisons). Are these areas equally as popular for the web searches for their wines?

The article cited above on unification notes:

Given this year’s joint tasting event, the wine industry is curious to see the possibility of Australia and New Zealand becoming a unified wine zone. In the evolving landscape of New World wines, Australia and New Zealand have emerged as prominent players in the New World wine landscape, each offering distinct and high-quality wine profiles. While collaborative marketing efforts have gained momentum, it's essential to understand the unique characteristics that define their wine industries.

To compare the similarity of any two regions, Wine Searcher is a good place to choose data, since it is dedicated to accumulating a database of both the price (see: Average Wine Prices) and the search popularity (see: Wine-Searcher Technology) of wines. It claims to base the data on 240 million searches of its database by consumers each year.

Wine Searcher publishes annual Top lists of its data, and the recent ones of relevance here are:

• The world's most wanted Australian wines of 2025
• The world's most wanted New Zealand wines of 2025.

I have plotted these two sets of data (10 wines for each country) in the first graph, with each wine represented by a point, located with its Search rank horizontally and Average Price vertically.

As you can see, there are three Australian wines where the price stands out from the main bunch of wines, both Australian and New Zealand. These are: Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz, Penfolds Grange Bin 95, and Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon. Otherwise, there is no particular relationship between search rank and price — popular wines for search are neither the cheapest nor the most expensive wines, for either country.

Equally importantly, though, all of the Australian wines are more popular in search terms than are all but two of the New Zealand wines, which are: Kumeu River Maté's Vineyard Chardonnay, and Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc. The Australian wines thus appear to be much better known. This is in spite of The rise and rise of New Zealand wine.

The article about unifying the Australian and New Zealand wine zones does note differences between the two countries:

Australia's wine industry is renowned for its diversity, with climates and terroirs that create a rich variety of wine styles. The country has developed a comprehensive appellation system featuring over 60 designated wine regions, producing wine in every state ... Today, Australia ranks among the world's largest wine exporters.

Renowned for its aromatic Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand is a leading wine-producing nation, acclaimed for its cool-climate Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Bordeaux-style blends, and Syrah. Located in the Pacific Ocean, 2,000 kilometres (1,300 miles) southeast of Australia, its 10 major wine regions span two main islands, with Marlborough as the most prominent.

So, Australia is a much bigger and more diverse wine-producing region. Indeed, it has previously been noted that New Zealand should be doing more to emphasize its own unique place in terms of quality (New Zealand Pinot finds its place):

In 2023, New Zealand was the sixth largest exporter of wine in the world by value; by volume it was the 11th. The US remains its number one market, largely due to its thirst for Sauvignon Blanc ... Eric Asimov, perhaps bravely, furthered that New Zealand needs to do more to promote its product and engage more with sommeliers and importers ... He concluded that by promoting its own tremendous story, New Zealand Pinot Noir will then find its place in the world.

On the other hand, it has also been suggest that: The next great Chardonnays are from New Zealand. In particular:

New Zealand has been producing Chardonnay for decades, but quality examples of this wine are on the rise from both islands ... In fact, it was the most-planted variety in New Zealand in the 1990s. Sauvignon Blanc may now rule when it comes to quantity, but the quality of Chardonnay is on its own steep incline.

Interestingly, in self-deprecating style, it has also been suggested that fine wine is perhaps not what New Zealand should be emphasizing (Leading NZ producer to move away from fine wine). Two Felton Road wines are in the list of the top ten most-searched wines (8: Felton Road Bannockburn Pinot Noir; 9: Felton Road Block 5 Pinot Noir). However, their producer has noted:

“The whole notion of fine wine is based around over-priced snobbery,” declared Felton Road owner and vigneron Nigel Greening during a panel discussion at the Pinot conference held in Christchurch between 11–13 February ... From here on, he added, Felton Road is “uncomfortable belonging to the fine wine sphere.”

Mind you, the same article also notes:

Felton Road is no stranger to fine wine. One of Central Otago’s leading producers, it commands impressive prices globally for its organic and biodynamic wines. One of just a handful of producers to make Pinot Noir exclusively from Bannockburn, New Zealand’s latest GI, which became a protected region on 1 February 2022, Felton Road also crafts premium Chardonnay and Riesling from three vineyards in this coveted spot on the South Island.

So, as a conclusion, pay attention from now on — an increase in New Zealand web searches for wines will indicate that you are doing so. But look for the affordable stuff (see US imports here: Can you tell the difference between Australia and New Zealand wine?).

As a final aside, we could look at the critics scores for the 40 Most Popular American Products (ie. the most-searched-for wines). Here, in this second graph, we can see that there is a very distinct increasing relationship between score and price. Personally, I could not afford any of the wines with scores >91 points. This is not true for either the Australia or New Zealand wines (graphed above), where I could afford most of the wines with these scores.

Wine price variation within the European Union

The International Organisation of Vine & Wine usually publishes their State of the World Vine and Wine Sector report in April each year. The 2023 report was pretty depressing in many ways, showing a decline in global wine consumption starting in 2018 and increasing after 2021. The 2024 report is not expected to show anything much different.

Similarly, the Silicon Valley Bank just released its US Wine Industry Report 2025, which noted that “the wine industry is undergoing a significant reset, marking the first demand-based correction in three decades ... While painful to experience now, these shifts may result in a healthier industry with more accessible bottle prices that will attract new consumers tomorrow.” I hope so.

In addition to these reports, there are the upcoming tariff portents of the new US president. These may have global effects in the not too distant future, although perhaps “tariffs on imported wine and spirits are more likely to harm American businesses than businesses abroad” (How Trump’s tariff threats will affect the wine and spirits industry and consumers).

So, as a change from all of this, now might be a good time to have a look at the past and present prices of wine among the states of the European Union (EU), and a few of its allied countries, rather than the USA. The situation is not quite as simple as we might expect or like. ¹

Let's start with a simple look at recent EU wine consumption, as shown above (Annual wine consumption in the European Union). As you can see, it varies quite a bit, but the general trend has been slightly downwards — the 2024 value was only 90% of the 2016 value. The average across the nine years was 100 million hectoliters (2,200 million gallons.

There was a distinct dip during the main years of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020–2021), suggesting that a lot of the consumption occurs in public places such as bars and restaurants, which were being avoided at that time. The unique rise in 2022 looks like a reaction to being safely allowed back into public drinking again. (Compare the USA: Alcohol consumption rises sharply during pandemic shutdown.)

Moving on to the different countries, we can look at the alcohol prices for 2020, as shown in the second graph (How alcohol prices vary across the EU) — this is simply a standardized measure with the EU average set at 100. Once again, these values vary quite a lot, with the Hungary price being only 38% of that of Finland.

Of the highest countries, the values for Finland and Sweden include a lot of spirits, which may also be true for Ireland. The wine-producing and consuming countries (eg. Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Spain) are mostly in the centre of the price list.

The three countries to the right of the main graph are members of the European Free Trade Association, which is why there are data for them. The high price data for Norway and Iceland match those for two of the other Nordic countries (Finland and Sweden), but not the fifth one, Denmark (which matches Switzerland, instead!).

Moving on specifically to wine, we have Eurostat data for changes in price since 2015, as shown in the table above (Food price monitoring tool). The data refer to Wine from Grapes, showing a Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices, with 2015 set to 100. The data allow us to calculate the change in price for two periods of 5 years each (2015–2019 and 2020–2024 inclusive).

The EU average is at the top, with the countries then in alphabetical order. Note that there are the same 27 EU countries, plus Norway and Switzerland (but not Iceland), and the UK for the first period (when it was in the EU, before Brexit).

Note that there was a much greater (average) price increase in the past 5 years compared to the first 5. I think we all know that prices increase through time at an increasing rate. However, it is worth noting the two decreases in price during the first 5 years (Ireland and Cyprus) – lucky them!

Note also that the top 6 countries in the second list are more than double the average — this is pretty serious. Indeed, the top 10 countries are in eastern Europe (plus Czechia, which is way down). In particular, the poor situation for Croatia has attracted discussion (Croatia ranks first in Europe for wine price increases), although quality is another matter (How this power couple is trying to make Croatian wine world class), as is historical significance (How a 150-year-old grapevine is helping California producers adapt to climate change).

The countries from northern Europe discussed above (Sweden, Norway, Finland) are actually in the middle of this list — as I noted, these are wine prices only, not spirits prices. Also, Ireland, Switzerland and Italy are doing very well (see this video for Switzerland: Countries are struggling to contain inflation, but not Switzerland). Austria has not done much worse in the second 5 years compared to the first, which is unusual within the list (see: Austria bucks (some) trends; however: Austria’s wine exports to fall back in 2024).

It seems unlikely that things are going to get much better. It is, of course, the younger people who are the future, on all continents, but it has been observed that wine is very traditional. So, it has been noted (Leveraging wine sales in 2025):

Amid falling overall consumption in several countries, there is also ongoing debate about how to attract more Millennial and adult-Gen-Z drinkers to wine. Sustainability cues could be important; IWSR research showed a greater proportion of regular wine drinkers in Gen Z and Millennial generations in the US associated organic wine with high quality.

So, there is cause for optimism, if we can just see the potential areas of growth. However, The Wine Economist (Mike Veseth) once noted Kenneth Boulding’s historical point that when the future eventually rolls around it never matches the predictions, it is always unexpected (The future of wine?). So, we shall see what we see.

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¹ The European Union currently consist of 27 countries. The United Kingdom was in the European Economic Community from 1973, which became the European Union, but then withdrew from the EU via Brexit in 2020 (along with Greenland, an autonomous province of Denmark, way back in 1985). Norway, Switzerland and Iceland have submitted membership applications in the past, but subsequently frozen or withdrawn them; they are, however, members of the European Free Trade Association. Turkey is a candidate EU country (and a member of the OECD along with North America and Australia).

Wine import taxes in the United Kingdom (are very different from the USA)

 As I noted in a recent week’s list of quotes (Quotes from famous people about wine and its role in our lives): “Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized.” — André Simon. It also makes it more expensive, due to government taxes.

New U.S. president Donald Trump made a central part of his ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign the tenet of imposing a minimum tariff on all imports (Drinks firms brace as Trump elected US president). He has made it one of his first actions to affirm the new taxes on trade, including a 10—20 % tariff on all imports (How will Trump’s universal and China tariffs impact the economy?).

So, as a change from the current U.S. news, let us look at United Kingdom taxes, or duties as they call them (basically, excise duty = import tax; What is the difference between taxes, duties, and tariffs?).

In the U.K., all alcoholic drinks are taxed based on their alcohol by volume (ABV), meaning that beverages with a higher alcoholic percentage are subject to higher rates. This idea came into effect in August 2023 (The new alcohol duty system), as previously there had been four separate taxes, covering beer, cider, spirits, wine and made-wine.

Note that the U.K. duty is a fixed cost, based on ABV, irrespective of the cost of the wine itself (cheap or expensive) — this is a very different thing from the U.S. import duties, which are a percentage of the cost of the wine (and are likely to stay that way: Four more years ... of a non-wine drinker in the White House).

The British system for wine looks roughly like this (£1 = US$1.22):
 ABV    Excise duty per 750 ml
    1%    £0
    2%    £0.14
    3%    £0.21
    4%    £0.74
    5%    £0.93
    6%    £1.12
    7%    £1.30
    8%    £1.49
    9%    £1.92
  10%    £2.14
  11%    £2.35
  12%    £2.57
  13%    £2.78
  14%    £2.99
  15%    £3.21

However, this arrangement was too simple, or perhaps too complex, as the government decided that there would be a “temporary arrangement for wine”, up to and including the end of January 2025 (Work out how much Alcohol Duty you need to pay). The idea is that:

If you need to pay duty on wine with an ABV of between 11.5% and 14.5%, there’s a temporary arrangement from 1 August 2023 up to and including 31 January 2025. During these dates you must use an assumed strength of 12.5% when you work out the amount of Alcohol Duty for your wine.

In other words, for 11.5—12.0% alcohol you pay more duty (£2.67) than you might expect, and for 13.0—14.5% you pay less. Go figure!

Anyway, the U.K. government has announced that it will increase tax on wine and spirits in line with inflation from February next year (Autumn budget: British government increases tax on wine and spirits). Wine at <12% may actually decrease in duty, but wine at greater % will increase (anything up to a 20% increase).

It should come as no surprise that taxes increase through time. We can look at the U.K. taxes, as they do not hide the information (Historic alcohol duty rates). I have plotted the data in the above graph, showing the taxes from 1995 through to 2017. It shows that at a minimum the amount of duty paid has pretty much doubled through time (ie. an increase to 200%).

For comparison, based on the Bank of England “Target” (i.e. average) inflation rate of 2% per year (Inflation: UK prices soar at fastest rate for almost ten years), the price of a bottle of wine has gone up to only 150% during the same period of time. So, taxes have increased faster than inflation.

It is therefore no wonder that Nearly half of UK drinkers plan to reduce their alcohol intake over the next year:

New research .... suggests that up to 48% of Britons intend to cut down on alcohol in the coming year. About 9% say they intend to stop drinking altogether. Those who are most likely to cut down are young, with 61% of 18-24 year olds planning to reduce or completely stop. This number increases to 68% for those aged between 25-34. As to why they’re planning to cut down, 34% said they wanted to save money, while an equal number said they wanted to cut down for their health.

My wine life here, as an Australian migrant in Sweden, was much simpler back when the U.K. was part of the European Union (it ended its membership in January 2020), and I thus didn’t have to pay import duty to get Australian wine into Sweden from Britain, which was a good supply source.

The world’s most expensive wines!

The world is full of expensive wines, which are often treated as being more for investment than for consumption. Each year, Wine-Searcher publishes lists of the most expensive from certain regions and of particular alcohol types. As foretold in a previous blog post (The world’s most expensive Australian wines?), I thought that I might now look at the area lists for 2024. This is important, in the sense that the upper price bracket determines the top of the pile.

Each list of 10 wines covers “The Most Expensive Wines on Wine-Searcher” for each of the named regions. The criteria for inclusion over the years have generally been: “a wine must have been produced over five consecutive vintages and have a minimum of 20 different offers in our search engine.” The prices quoted in the lists are their Global Average Retail Price (see: Average wine prices).

There are 2024 lists available for these areas: Argentina, Australia, Bordeaux, Burgundy red and Burgundy white, Champagne, Italy, Napa, New Zealand, Spain, and Uruguay. There were 13 (not 10) wines available from Uruguay, due to equal prices.

These wines are listed in the figure at the bottom of this post, with one row per wine and one column showing the Wine-Searcher GARP price, along with its area (click to enlarge). The wines are sorted from most to least expensive, and their rank order is shown.

These data are summarized in the next figure, which shows the average rank order and the average bottle price for each region. There are clearly massive differences in price between the areas, with a 200-fold stretch from Uruguay up to Red Burgundy. The most expensive wine is: Leroy Musigny Grand Cru (red Burgundy) at $38,267 per bottle. [As an aside, the average US salary in 2024 is $60K.]

The presence of Burgundy at the top of the list is no great surprise, remembering that this only represents the 10 most expensive wines; and the reds being more expensive than the whites is also no great surprise. I doubt that Pinot noir and Chardonnay are intrinsically better grapes than, say, Cabernet sauvignon. However, apparently Vivino users did once rate Pinot noir as being better than Cabernet sauvignon, overall (Cabernet sauvignon versus Pinot noir: which is better?).

Nor is it any surprise that Champagne comes next in the list, with its expensive vintage cuvées, and especially as the grapes are again Pinot noir and Chardonnay. These two grape varieties comprised the top 20 wines based on price, before the first Cabernet (see below).

It may, however, surprise a few people that Napa ranks next, ahead of Bordeaux. Napa's 10 most expensive wines certainly do compete globally on price (the wineries have made sure of that). For example, the top Ghost Horse Vineyard Premonition Cabernet Sauvignon ($6,001 per bottle) handsomely out-does both the Petrus (Pomerol, $4,250) and the Le Pin (Pomerol, $3,719).

Italy is slightly ahead of Spain, on average, which out-does Australia. Note that Argentina ranks ahead of New Zealand based on average price, but not on average rank. This is due mainly to one wine: Catena Zapata Estiba Reservada Agrelo, which costs twice as much as the next most expensive Argentinian wine (and thus greatly affects the average price).

It remains to now compare the bottle prices to the assessed wine quality scores (out of 100), as listed by Wine-Searcher. The data are shown in the figure above, with one dot per wine. There are 10 wines that do not have any score provided on Wine-Searcher (and are thus not shown).

There generally is a pattern in the figure, in the sense that the most expensive wines do tend to have the best scores. However, not all of the high-scoring wines necessarily cost the most money. For example, the 97-point wines vary in price from $243 to $20,690, and the 96-point wines vary from $252 to $17,884. Clearly, value for money varies wildly. Interestingly, the only 100-point wine in the list costs an average of just $1,635 — Chateau Angelus Homage to Elisabeth Bouchet (Saint-Émilion). Go for it!

We have been told that these days, wine price is related to increasing score (Weighing wine scores against price), but the data here make it clear that where the wine comes from has a far greater effect on price than its assessed quality.

In terms of the future, there are obvious omissions from the data. For example, Germany, and even the Loire and Alsace, are missing from the regions, which means that Riesling is missing from the grapes. I think that I would have picked these ahead of, say, Uruguay.

Global per capita wine expenditure versus consumption

I have looked before at the relationship between national wine consumption and wine production (Does wine production increase wine consumption?). Another interesting relationship is between national wine consumption and wine expenditure (The cost of wine consumed differs greatly between countries), which I will delve into again here.

Let's have a look at some data for 2015, as contained in the Annual Database of National Beverage Consumption Volumes and Expenditures, 1950 to 2015, compiled by Alexander Holmes and Kym Anderson. Their Tables 1.17 (Volume of beverage wine consumption per capita) and 1.22 (Expenditure per capita on wine) contain the information that we want. We need to standardize the summed data (total) from each country, in order to deal with different population sizes and demographies (ie. we should compare expenditure and consumption per adult). Unfortunately, we have data only per capita, which deals with population size but not with the proportion of people under drinking age.

The result is shown in the graph, for 77 wine-consuming countries. Each point represents one country, located vertically based on the amount of money (in $US) spent on wine during 2015 per person, and horizontally based on the liters of alcohol consumed per person during 2015. Twenty-two of the points are labeled.

Unsurprisingly, the data show that there is a reasonably strong relationship between consumption and expenditure — the more that is consumed per person then the more money is spent per person. However, the increase in expenditure accounts for only 69% of the variation in consumption — some countries definitely drink cheap wine and some drink more expensive wine! It is this between-country variation that is of most interest.

The pink line (on the graph) indicates an average expenditure of c. $US90 per liter of alcohol per person per year. So, if a container of wine contains 12% alcohol, then this equates to $7.50 per liter, or $5.50 per standard bottle (750 ml). The countries above the line spend more money than this, on average, and those below the line spend less.

Note that the people of the majority of the countries do not drink much wine at all, and consequently do not spend much money on it — these are the points clustered in the bottom left-hand corner of the graph.

Portugal, Italy, and France are the countries where the most wine is consumed per person, which surprises no-one. However, the people of France are prepared to spend considerably more money on that wine, on average, than are the Portuguese and Italians. The Spaniards, on the other hand, consume far less wine per person than any of these three countries, and the $/liter is also a bit less than for Italy and Portugal. The Argentinians are not that different from the Spaniards, either.

The Germans consume a bit more wine than do the British (UK) but spend far fewer $/liter on it — the British spend nearly 2.5x as much money per liter as do the Germans, on average. The Australians and New Zealanders are in the same ball–park as the British, not unexpectedly. The Americans, on the other hand, are not big wine–drinkers per person, nationally, and they spend very close to the average amount per liter — the silver-tails are counter-balanced by the ordinary folk.

The Scandinavian countries differ considerably from each other. Although Sweden and Norway spend about the same amount of money, Sweden consumes considerably more wine for that money. Denmark consumes twice as much wine as Norway per person, but spends only two-thirds more money. So, it is the Swedes who drink wine on the cheap, and the Norwegians who are the least thrifty of the three countries.

Note that the people of Switzerland, Denmark, and Slovenia stand out from the rest in the graph, being the countries that spend the most per liter of wine alcohol. They drink roughly the same amount as do the people of France or Austria, but are apparently prepared to spend considerably more money on their wine (these people have more money than sense, perhaps?).

However, the people who spend the most money per consumption (ie. expenditure ÷ consumption) are in the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, both of whom have very small wine consumptions per capita — these appear to be the real silver-tails in the list. They are followed in the list by Singapore and Thailand, and then Hong Kong and Malaysia, who are all in that same boat. In these countries, most of the wine is imported, of course, and thus presumably more expensive than it is in wine–producing countries. The countries who spend the least money per consumption are in Romania and Belarus, both of whom have medium consumptions per capita.

So, we learn from all of this that the world is a very variable place, and that this applies to the wine part of the world just as much as anywhere else. Only two-thirds of wine expenditure is related to the amount consumed, with the other third telling us that countries and cultures each go their own way.

Things will change, of course. For example, at the moment the Older generation in France blamed for domestic wine lull, and the incoming generations will presumably differ from this.

Alcohol usage (and over-usage) around the world

You may never have heard of it, but there is a survey called the Global Drug Survey, which has been conducted annually since 2012. This year's report should be released in another month, or so. However, the results have not differed much for the past couple of years, so a look at last year’s results could be informative. Clearly, alcohol is one of the drugs studied.

This is claimed to be the world’s largest drug survey, intended “to promote honest conversations about drug use, and help people use drugs more safely regardless of the legal status of the drug.” The interest is not in the levels of use, per se, but in a comparison of use patterns and trends.

Available online are the Global Drug Survey 2021 Key Findings Report, and an Executive Summary. Here, I will extract some of the information as related solely to alcohol. In 2021, there were 32,000 respondents, from 22 countries (each with >160 participants). About one-third of the respondents were from Germany, followed by New Zealand and the United States.

Let’s start with rates of drug use. Here are the percentages of the 32,000 people who had used each of the listed drugs during the previous year. Clearly, alcohol predominates; but cannabis and tobacco both get more than 50% usage. Compare this to my youth, when huge numbers of people smoked tobacco, but no-one admitted to smoking cannabis, except university students!

As far as alcohol is concerned, the majority of the respondents were categorized as low-risk drinkers (on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, developed by the World Health Organization). This does not mean that people do not like a drink, or two. This next graph shows the number of days on which alcohol was reported to be consumed within the previous 12 months, for several of the countries.

There is nothing too unexpected there. The French drink on average every 3 days, and the Hungarians every 4 days. However, the Germans are below the global average; and the New Zealanders drink notably more often than do the Australians.

There is also, of course, the matter of getting drunk — defined as “having drunk so much that your physical and mental faculties are impaired”. This next graph shows the number of occasions, within the previous 12 months, reported by members of several of the countries. The survey average was 9 times, which is about once every 40 days.

Moreover, those Australians in the survey managed about twice the global average rate, with the Danes and Finns not that far behind, along with the Americans. The Germans, Spaniards and Italians clearly drink in moderation, along with the New Zealanders. That is, Australians drink less often than New Zealanders, but when they did drink they were more likely to keep drinking.

After getting drunk, it is always possible to feel regret about this activity. This next graph shows the percentage of occasions on which the participants “wished you had drunk less or not drunk at all.” This generally seemed to vary between about one-fifth and one-quarter of the occasions.

The Danes and Finns seem to have the fewest regrets, in spite of leading the way in drinking, while the Australians regretted much more — maybe this is why they drink less often than New Zealanders — they drink less often but get drunk more often, and then regret it. The Irish and Poles had the most regrets.

There must, of course, be a reason for having regrets, and a number of reasons were provided, as listed in the next graph. Each person was asked “to think back over the occasions they have regretted getting drunk and select their top three reasons for why this happened.” The graph shows the percentage of people who selected each reason as first, second or third. The lesson here is not to drink your alcohol too fast, nor to mix your drinks.

Getting drunk is never recommended. After all: 1 in 5 deaths of US adults 20 to 49 is from excessive drinking; and even: In young adults, moderate to heavy drinking is linked to higher risk of stroke. Worse still, we have been told that the: Alcohol death toll is growing, due to the ongoing pandemic.

You can have a drink or two, but not five or six.

This is who drinks the priciest champagne

Since Champagne exports have been in the news recently, I thought that we might look at which countries preferentially drink the stuff. We are sometimes told about the top Champagne export markets, in terms of total value. For example, the AAWE recently listed these countries as the top markets for 2020:

United States (501.9 million euros), United Kingdom (338.2 m€), Japan (270.8 m€), Germany (167.4 m€), and Italy (146.8 m€).

But this does not really tell us much, because the USA has 5 times as many people as the UK, and 2.5 times as many as Japan, so we expect greater imports of most things. So, this does not tell us much about the relative propensity for drinking Champagne, among these countries' denizens. What we need to do is look at how much the people are spending, individually. We do this by working out the price being paid per person, not per country.

My data for the population size of these countries comes from Worldometer. I simply divided the AAWE numbers by the Worldometer numbers. This leads to the country rankings shown in the graph. Each point represents one of the top 30 Champagne-importing countries, ranked horizontally by total value (million euros) and vertically as value per capita (euros per person).

The correlation between these two rankings is not high (0.25), indicating that the price per person is very high in some places, even if the total volume imported is small.

For example, note that the #1 importer (the USA) drops to 20th place per person, while Luxembourg jumps from 29th for total volume to 1st per person. Indeed, Luxembourgers spend 10 times as much on Champagne as those cheap Americans; and the Belgians and Swiss do not do too badly for themselves, either. The full list of per capita expenditure is included at the bottom of this post.

Note that other large importing countries also move down the rankings after accounting for population size, such as China. On the other hand, some smaller countries move up the list, notably Sweden, Denmark and Norway — those Scandinavians certainly do themselves well for sparkling wine.

Some countries hardly change ranking, of course, including Australia, the Netherlands, and Taiwan. Interestingly, the people of Hong Kong spend nearly twice as much per person on Champagne as do the Singaporeans. There might be a message there, although I am not sure what.

We could, of course, compare this per-capita Champagne list to the AAWE list of overall per-capita expenditure on wine. The latter list places most of the same countries at the top of the ranking, including Switzerland, Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, and the United Kingdom. However, Luxembourg is nowhere to be seen, and instead we have Slovenia. So, the Luxembourgers must specialize in Champagne, while the Slovenians apparently prefer some other sparkling wine, instead. Perhaps the Luxembourgers celebrate more often than do the rest of us? Perhaps there is something wrong with the local Crémant de Luxembourg?

Anyway, recent reports note that: Booming Champagne could reach pre-Covid levels by year-end, along with: Sparkling, pricier wines lead in retail sales. Unlike the rest of the wine industry, things seem to be looking reasonably good for the sparkling-wine makers in eastern France, even if those Champenois are annoyed with the Russians, just at the moment, and the organic farmers are having trouble with downy mildew.

Per capita expenditure on Champagne in 2020:

Country Luxembourg Belgium Switzerland Hong Kong Sweden Denmark United Kingdom Australia Norway Singapore Netherlands Austria Finland New Zealand Italy Japan Germany Ireland United Arab Emirates United States Canada Spain Portugal South Korea Taiwan South Africa Russia Mexico Nigeria China

€ / person 14.70 12.20 10.87 6.13 5.32 5.10 4.96 4.89 3.64 3.32 2.94 2.84 2.60 2.52 2.43 2.15 1.99 1.93 1.85 1.51 1.38 1.28 0.88 0.57 0.55 0.26 0.24 0.12 0.06 0.03

Wine prices 2000-2020

In my previous post I looked at 20 years of buying Australian wine in Australia (1980-2000). I noted an exponential increase in the prices of the wines, along with only a linear increase in prices due to inflation. This neatly complemented recent media comments about "prices for the established trophy wines [having] skyrocketed in recent years" (Beware the hype) — it has been happening to ordinary wines, too.

I moved to Sweden at the beginning of this century, but I continued buying Australian wine, so that I can directly compare the most recent 20 years with the previous 20. Interestingly, in this post we get to see something really quite different in terms of price, compared to last time. Wine buying is not as simple as you think!

Trying to get Australian wine in Sweden is obviously far more difficult than getting it in Australia. There is certainly a selection available, but it is relatively limited. So, at times I have also bought wine in other European Union (EU) countries, to supplement the supply. The best source has been the United Kingdom, for historical reasons; and it is still the biggest European importer of bulk and bottled Australian wine to this day (see Top bulk wine suppliers to the UK, 2019 v 2020). So, I have a reasonable number of wines to study.

Indeed, the first graph below shows that I have purchased in Europe 570 Australian wines, from 154 wineries, compared to 581 wines (from 118 wineries) back in Australia; so, I have kept pace. As you can see, I first started getting wines from the UK in 2007 (hence the peak that year), and stopped in 2018. I started getting wines from elsewhere in 2008, either on holiday travel or by delivery; my last purchase from Germany was in 2018. I also got some wines on eBay, from 2011 onwards. The big peak in 2016 involved getting a few mixed dozens that became available locally.

Overall, 30% of the Australian wines were not purchased in Sweden. Obviously, I was targeting selected wines that were not available locally. So, it is not surprising that I paid more for those wines than for the local wines — an average of 216 SEK versus 169 SEK (ie. 25% more). The currency exchange rate has varied a lot over the past 20 years, but at the moment US$ 1 ≈ 8½ crowns, so we are talking about wines in the vicinity of US$ 20, here. Some of the price difference is also due to transport costs.*

In my last post, for my analysis I used those 453 wines that had both vintage dates and prices in my (hand-scrawled) records — most of the wines were the current vintage release, so that the vintage year is closely related to the purchase year. This time, there are 522 such wines in my (much more neat) spreadsheet. These are plotted in the second graph. The horizontal axis shows the vintage year of the wine, while the vertical axis indicates the Swedish crown price at the time of purchase. Each point represents one wine, with the pink points being those purchased outside Sweden. The latter non-Sweden wines were converted to SEK (from £ or €) using the exchange rate at the time of purchase.

Clearly, this graph does not illustrate an increase in wine price through time. Indeed, the exponential price model that I illustrated in the previous post (and which is common in economics) accounts for only 2% of the variation in price — this means that the average purchase price remained pretty constant across the 20 years.

This is not to say that the actual wines remained constant in price, since there is an expected increase in price due to inflation. Even non-necessity goods, like wine, do not remain constant. This increase is shown as the red line in the graph. The inflation data that I used comes from Sweden Inflation Rate 1960-2020. I started with an average wine price of 150 SEK for the 1997 vintage, and increased this each year by the annual inflation rate. The inflation data show a roughly linear increase in price over the two decades, amounting to 30%.

So, what is going on here? It seems to me that this is likely to be an example of an issue recently discussed by Huon Hooke (Price limits with wine):

The truth is, we all have our price-limits, whether or not we stick to a strict budget. But it’s always puzzled me that some people’s price limit for wine never seems to increase. 

I’ve known people who have been buying AUD $15 wine for decades. And they grizzle that it’s getting hard to find decent AUD $15 wine. Well, stop being a tight-wad, is my response, usually muttered under my breath. There is this thing called inflation. You don’t expect your other living expenses to stay the same for years, do you? So why wine?

Well, it seems to me that I have been caught out doing exactly this. I should be willing to pay 30% more for my Australian wine than I did 20 years ago, and yet I have not increased my wine "price limit" one iota. I am still targeting the same price range as when I moved to Sweden at the turn of the century. Mind you, I am still finding good quality wine in that price range (US$ 15-25), so I may not change my behavior any time soon. Moreover, I am a retiree, so I am unlikely to increase my expenditure any time before winning the lottery.

We have been told that Price affects the way people experience wine. That is, given exactly the same wine, but labeled with two different prices, we will mostly prefer the apparently more expensive wine. This being so, I keep away from the US$ 10 wines, because I don't want my brain to think that my wine is awful; but on the other hand, I also keep away from the US$ 50 wines, because I decline to pay that much for flavored alcohol.

As noted above, the vintage year is closely related to the purchase year for the wines, except in those cases where I specifically bought back vintages. To check whether this has an effect on my analysis, the third graph plots the wine prices (vertically) along with the date of purchase (horizontally). This graph includes all 570 wines, rather than just the 522 plotted in the graph above.

This graph shows little alternative information, except that there are nine wines purchased in 2016 that exceed 400 SEK — these are part of a collection of back vintages bought from the UK, plus one on eBay.

Conclusion

For the first two decades of my Australian-wine purchasing activities, the bottle prices went up exponentially, while for the next two decades they remained constant. I do not conclude from this that wine prices stopped increasing. Instead, I later adjusted my behavior in order to maintain my wine-price limit. For example, my analysis of the data in the previous post indicates that I was paying an average of 184 SEK per wine bottle at the end of the first 20 years, but my analysis in this post indicates that I paid an average of only 169 SEK across the second 20 years (8% less). What a cheapskate!

It is, of course, somewhat more difficult to maintain this rate these days.

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* One method for getting wine from the UK involved my wife attending EU meetings in London, which she did as part of her job. I would get some wines sent to her hotel, and she brought them back to Sweden in her luggage, thus saving on the (often quite serious) transport costs. This would net me six bottles every couple of months. This all stopped when the UK first announced Brexit, and the EU meetings were immediately moved to Amsterdam. The UK is still struggling to implement Brexit (including having asked for time extensions), but the EU has been ready for more than 2 years!

Exponential increase in wine prices (1980-2000)

Recently, both Neal Hulkower (The cost of drinking wine history) and Eric Asimov (How income inequality has erased your chance to drink the great wines) have commented on the prices of modern high-quality wines, compared to The Good Old Days. Well, I am just as old as they are, so I figure I can do this, too.

Neal's commentary was based on a mathematical analysis of his own records for 450 wines that he had tasted between 1969 and 1979 (What can I still afford to drink? AAWE Working Paper 254). I wrote a blog post about this, plotting his data as graphs (The outrageous prices of modern high-quality wines).

Well, The Good Old Days (last century) for me were not quite the same as for Neal (or Eric). We all have our price limit, and that applies to flavored alcohol, just as much as anything else. In Australia back then, we did not drink much "foreign" wine, because we could not afford it (as I noted in Tasting great wines?). So, if I am going to look at the wines I bought way back when, then the data will pertain to Australian wines, not American or European. (A note on a couple of the actual wines is at the bottom of this post.)

This is not to say that I drank no imported wines, because my records for 1982-2001 show 76 such wines, from 61 wineries. However, the Australian wines total 581, from 118 wineries, which is a much better sample size. So, the data discussed below refer only to the local wines. Here, I will look at the wines from the first 20 years of my time as a wine drinker (see Some personal anecdotes), and I will discuss the most recent 20 years in the next post.

Of these early wines, 453 have both vintage dates and prices in my (hand-scrawled) records; and these are plotted in the first graph below. The horizontal axis shows the vintage year of the wine, while the vertical axis indicates the Australian dollar price at the time of purchase, with each point representing one wine.

Most of the wines after 1979 were the current vintage release, so that the vintage year is closely related to the purchase year. These are shown by blue points in the graph (one per wine). The green points are all back vintages that were still available, if you were prepared to spend some time scavenging in the liquor stores. In most cases, I purchased only one bottle of each wine, on the principle that tasting a wider range of wines was more interesting and educational, rather than focusing on a few favorites.

There are several features of the graph that we could focus on here. First, the post-1979 wines increase in value exponentially, as found by most previous commentators on wine prices. This is illustrated by the black line in the graph. This regression line accounts for nearly 50% of the variation in price, which is really quite strong, in the field of economics.

Some of this increase may, of course, be due to increased vinous ambition on my part, or even an increase in my salary, leading to me purchasing better and better wines. However, I do not think that these are large effects, as I have always kept a pretty tight reign on the price that I am prepared to pay (the affordability limit, as it is called).

So, what we are looking at here is mostly an increase in the price of Australian wines over a 20-year period. Even wine of reasonable quality became much less affordable during those 20 years, just as has been observed by Neal Hulkower and Eric Asimov for high-quality non-Australian wines.

A second point, then, would be to look at the expected increase in price due to inflation. We do not expect our living expenses to remain constant over the years, and the same applies to wine, even though it is one of the non-necessity goods. The inflation data that I have used comes from Australian Inflation Rates: 1949 to 2020. I started with the regression estimate of the average wine price for 1979, and increased this price each year by the annual inflation rate. The result is shown as the red line in the graph.

Note that the wine prices kept pace with inflation for the first decade of the data; but from the early 1990s onward the prices increasingly outstrip inflation. The inflation price increased roughly linearly with time, while the actual wine prices went up exponentially. Early on, there is thus little difference between the two, but not later on. So, maybe this provides a neat definition of The Good Old Days for my generation — when wine price increases kept pace with inflation but not more.

A third thing we could look at is the difference in price when I bought the same wine at different times, often several years apart. My records show 25 such occasions; and these are plotted in the second graph. Here, the first purchase price is shown horizontally and the second price vertically, with each point representing one wine. The pink line shows equality between the two prices.

Not unexpectedly, in most cases the wine cost more the second time, although occasionally bargains could be found. More interestingly, though, the prices here also increase exponentially, as illustrated by the black line in the graph. This regression line accounts for 70% of the variation in price. So, it will cost you dearly, the longer you leave it to purchase your bottle of wine.

Conclusion

Wine prices increased exponentially in Australia between 1980 and 2000, while inflation increased wine prices only linearly. Therefore, wine became increasingly unaffordable during that time.

In spite of this, wine itself became much more popular among a broader range of people, at the expense of the standard cliché image of Australians swilling beer. One cannot really begrudge this — the standard of the wine increased enormously, along with the price. Cheap fortified and sparkling wines were the fare of my parents' generation, but not of mine (The evolution of Australian wine). The Good Old Days for me were better than for my parents (winewise, that is).

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The first top-of-the-line bottle I ever bought was the Penfolds 1972 Grange Hermitage (as it was then called). This particular wine was released relatively cheaply. The 1971 vintage was much-lauded (Penfolds Grange — Best vintages, prices, history), and the 1972 was thereby over-shadowed. At the same time, Penfolds needed some cash flow, so they under-priced the 1972. This was still available (if you knew where to look) in 1983 for a mere A$25, which would be A$90 today allowing for inflation. The current Penfolds Grange Bin 95 retails for ten times this amount, of course. The 1972 can still be had for A$1,000, or so.

The first wine I bought from the year of my birth was the Saltram 1958 Bin 20 Claret (Museum Release). This is a wine most of you have never heard of; but you can still read about it, because it was one of the better wines from a legendary winemaker (Peter Lehmann’s Barossa Valley masterpieces). I paid A$30 back in 1990, which would be A$65 today — an auction bottle sold in 2008 for A$289 (Langton's Top 500 List 2008).

Much variation in wine duties in Europe

As most of you will have noticed, there is a so-called trade war going on between the USA and Europe. This has nothing to do with the wine industry, directly, but it has been dragged into it because some of the personalities behind the squabble think that it is a good idea.

This raises the issue of how much of the cost of wine to the poor consumer is due to the contents of the bottle, and how much is mandated by the government. US readers are concerned about import duties, for example, given the dramatic rise in the price they currently pay for European wine.

However, in this post, I will look at alcohol excise duties, as they apply to wine within Europe itself. Almost all European countries also have some form of value-added tax on all retail sales (sometimes called a goods and services tax); and there are, of course, import duties for non-European wine. However, some countries target alcohol with an extra tax, just for good measure; and this is the topic here.

The European Union

The EU is well documented with regard to taxes. In this case, the Tax Foundation has produced a convenient map, as shown below (click to enlarge). The prices shown are based on a standard bottle of wine, at the normal percentage alcohol. The colors reflect the size of the tax, in euros. The Foundation’s web page lists equivalent $US, if you prefer that currency.

The Foundation notes:

As one might expect, southern European countries well-known for their wines — such as France, Greece, Portugal, and Spain — have decided against taxing it or do so at a very low rate, while further north countries tend to levy taxes — sometimes hefty taxes.

This will suggest to you that the wine consumers of northern Europe are well versed in the matter of how to avoid alcohol duties, by crossing their border into another country before purchasing, where the duty is lower (see the examples my post: European wine taxes — and what to do about them).

The European Free Trade Association

As noted on the map, countries like Norway, Iceland and Switzerland are in Europe but are not part of the EU (as now is the case also for the United Kingdom). These countries are mostly part of the EFTA, and thus should be included in this post.

Switzerland keeps it simple. There are both alcohol and tobacco taxes, but: “The alcohol tax does not apply to traditional fermented products such as beer, wine and cider. Beer, however, is subject to a beer tax levied by the Federal Customs Administration.” So, wine is better than beer!

The information for Norway is not at all simple, as noted by the official web page. It seems that the excise duty for wine varies depending on the actual alcohol content (which it does not for either beer or spirits) — 5.11 NOK per percent per liter. So, a standard bottle of 13% wine would cost you an extra 50 NOK, or € 4.75. This is much higher than anywhere within the EU; which explains why the liquor store with the biggest turnover in neighboring Sweden is the one that can be most easily accessed from Norway’s capital, Oslo.

Iceland appears to be even worse. Back in 2018, the government made alcohol taxes even more onerous than they already were for the locals (see: Alcohol tax: Iceland pays the most In Europe). To quote a press release:

When compared to Norway, a neighbouring country with high alcohol taxes, taxes are on average 28.8% higher in Iceland, with taxes on fortified wines, such as port and sherry, a whopping 89% higher.

The Icelandic Federation of Trade has produced a graph illustrating the point, as shown here (click to enlarge). It is in Icelandic, but the country names are pretty clear, and you can easily guess which one is Norway and which pair is Iceland (before and after the tax change). The four bars for each country are (left to right): spirits, strong wine, light wine, and beer.

Sadly, the Icelanders have no land border to cross, in order to get cheaper wine. Perhaps this explains why their government thinks they can get away with this outrageous tax.