Wine Report 2011

Wine Report 2010

Wine suppliers are forecasting better times ahead in OLN’s annual Wine Report poll.

Click here to see the top 50 wine brands in the UK off-trade.

The league table for the multiple grocers looks, at first glance, remarkably similar to that for the market as a whole, but there are some subtle differences.

It's a little-known fact that in the multiple specialists, France remains the biggest seller. The gap between France and Australia is actually widening, with Australia reportedly losing 18 per cent of its sales in off-licence chains and France down by a more modest 4 per cent, according to unofficial figures.

Most expect that this buoyant category still has a long way to go before it reaches saturation point.

Screwcaps are rapidly gaining share in the UK wine market, with both natural and plastic corks losing out to the trade's new favourite.

The last 12 months have seen little change in the position of the top 10 countries supplying wine to the UK. Tim Atkin MW reports how differing consumer tastes could herald a change in dominance.

Who is drinking wine? Where, when and with whom? Consumer research company TNS's AlcoVision, which monitors what people are drinking over the course of the year, gives OLN a snapshot of the market.

TNS Worldpanel monitors a group of 25,000 British households who track everything they buy in supermarkets and co-ops. Account executive Alex McGuckian looks at how wine is selling.

What suppliers and retailers really want is something that will draw in new consumers, and discounting gets a thumbs down.

With four of the top five wines seeing small declines in sales in the past year, Gallo has come within a whisker of claiming the off-trade crown. It has closed the gap on Hardys and is virtually level-pegging with its Australian rival on any measure you care to mention: value, volume, market penetration and average bottle price.

Has the UK wine market turned a corner? For much of the recent past, Nielsen has been reporting just 2 per cent value growth in light wine – but for the year to May it creeps up to 4 per cent, ahead of inflation which was around 2.6 per cent in June.