Global wine markets, 1961 to 2003 : a statistical compendium

Abstract

Need to know how other exporting countries are doing in your growth markets abroad? Or how wine is competing in the market for alcoholic beverages? Or which countries are most rapidly upgrading the quality of their wine imports? Th ese and a thousand other such questions can now be readily answered with the help of this new statistical compendium. Among other things, the Compendium exposes the extent to which the worldís various wine markets are structurally adjusting. Until 15 years ago, wine exporting was an almost exclusively European activity. In the decade to 1985, for example, about 80 per cent of exports came from fi ve European Union members (France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Portugal), another 10 per cent came from Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, and a further 8 per cent came from other European countries and the former French colonies of North Africa. Since then, however, California and several southern hemisphere countries (Australia, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, and New Zealand) have begun to challenge that European dominance. Between 1986 and 1999, this new groupís combined share of world wine exports grew from 1.6 to 15 per cent in value terms. Simultaneously, per capita consumption in many traditional wineconsuming countries is declining as consumers switch from quantity to quality, while consumption in emerging markets in Europe and East Asia is growing rapidly from a low base. As well, two-way trade is becoming more common as consumers seek a greater range of styles and varieties of wine. Globalization also is aff ecting ownership of major wine fi rms, as mergers and acquisitions spill over national borders. With these major changes, and with a new round of WTO-sponsored multilateral trade negotiations (the Doha Development Agenda) getting under way, there is a greater need than ever for systematic analysis of the worldís markets for wine. An essential prerequisite for such analysis is a thorough understanding of past trends and recent developments. To that end this statistical compendium brings together data from a wide range of national and international sources and summarizes them in ways that make it easy to see trends over time and draw comparisons across countries.