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.
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).
