The OIV released their annual “State of the World” wine sector report last week (via social-distancing video conference, of course) and it is noteworthy both for its view of the recent past and its tentative analysis of present conditions and future trends. (Here are links to the report summary, the press release in pdf, and the presentation in pdf,  and the report in pdf.)

Under normal circumstances, my focus here would be on the annual report itself and the recently-released special study of the sparkling wine boom, both of which are packed full of data and sound analysis. But, as OIV Director General Pau Roca would note, these are rear-view mirror reports that document a world that does not exist in the same way anymore. They are useful for sure (see below), but don’t directly address today’s most pressing questions about the future of the global wine sector.

So we must move from quantitative measure to qualitative assessments and informed speculation, and that’s what Pau Roca provided in the press conference and resultant video report (see YouTube video below). Herewith some of the OIV highlights with my commentary.

An Inconvenient Truth

It is an inconvenient truth that the countries that rank highest for total wine consumption (the United States, UK, Spain, Italy, France, etc.) are also the countries that have experienced the most severe impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. And they will likely to be among the hardest hit by the recession. The global impact on the wine sector will thus be much more serious than if any one or two of these markets were affected.

Globally, we are looking at two important changes: a shift in sales channels and a fall in demand, immediately in some regions and eventually in others (see below). Wine sales via bars, restaurants, and travel and tourism-related vectors (think cruise ships and duty free shops) have collapsed and it is unclear how quickly these market will recover even when the green light is given to re-open.

Supermarket and e-commerce sales have risen. In some regions there is a net gain in sales at least in the short run, but this is not true everywhere. In the U.S., for example, off-premise sales have surged enough recently to produce a net gain in wine revenues in the short run.

Net decreases in both volumes and sales values are projected for parts of Europe where bar and restaurant sales are especially important and travel and tourism are big factors, however, with a resultant rising surplus of wine. Crisis distillation, which we think of as  an artifact of the bad old days of the EU wine lake, seems likely to return, and in a big way, in order to stabilize wine producer and grower incomes. Maybe the industrial alcohol that will result can be used for hand sanitizer?

The shift to e-commerce will be welcomed by many small and medium-sized producers who have lost on-trade accounts and cannot compete effectively for high-volume supermarket sales. The crisis is an accelerant in this regard, speeding up an existing trend. Taken together, these impacts present many challenges and some opportunities, creating losers and some winners.

Recession Effects

The emerging economic crisis has been compared with the Great Depression here in the U.S. and with the severe economic dislocations following World War II in Europe, but in truth we don’t yet know how deep the decline will be or how long it will last. That will only be clear somewhere down the road when the rear-view mirror image comes into focus.

But the mirror can reveal trends to look for on the road ahead. Here are OIV charts for global sparkling wine consumption. The top chart shows volume and value trends indexed to 2002 = 100. The lower chart shows average bottle price.  Focus on the the shift in sparkling wine volumes before and after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis to see how an economic crisis can alter consumption trends.

In terms of volume of sales, sparkling wine took a big dip in 2008-2009 and then returned to its rising trend, but  from the lower base.  It never caught up to where it would have been without the crisis. That recession dip resulted in a persistently lower volumes  against the previous trend.

And — and this is an important point — this is true even though the later years included the global Prosecco boom, which raised sparkling wine volumes even as it lowered average bottle price. Without the Prosecco boom (and the lower average sparkling wine prices it produced), the sustained recessionary impact would be even more pronounced.

Now sparkling wine isn’t all wine and the past isn’t necessarily the future — your mileage may vary, as they say — but this figure shows that recessions can have enduring impacts on global wine markets.

How Not to Waste a Crisis

They say that it is important not to waste a crisis because sometimes important changes can happen in turbulent times that would otherwise be impossible. As suggested above, many wine firms are taking the crisis as an opportunity to shift to e-commerce channels or to diversify their revenue streams. They might never have gotten around to this without the crisis. Now there is little choice.

There are good uses of this crisis, as Pau Roca noted in his comments. This global public health emergency, for example, shows us the importance of scientific expertise and collective action when faced with a global issue. It would be good if coronavirus caused us to think and act more seriously in this way about other global threats, especially the global climate change emergency, which will not go away when the coronavirus crisis is resolved.

On the other hand, Pau Roca notes, it is a wrong use of the crisis to either cynically promote alcohol consumption at this time or to do the opposite, to take this as an opportunity to advance a prohibitionist agenda. It is easy for wine to get caught in the crossfire in this crisis, as in South Africa where, for several weeks, it was forbidden to sell wine in the domestic market (because of concerns about alcohol abuse) and illegal to export it either, because of a ban on non-essential transport. Yikes!

Thanks to Pau Roca and the OIV for their work on these issues. Here’s a video of Pau’s report.