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 Millions of shoppers across Britain are opting for bargain, with sales of bottles of wine priced between £1 and £3 soaring by 130 per cent, according to new research. While there has been a minor drop in sales for wine costing between £4 and £6, high street supermarkets have taken on discount shops in a price war, says the Report.
According to figures released yesterday by the analysts Nielsen in the Wine and Spirit Trade Association Market Report , the US and France are the only two countries to see the average price for a 75cl bottle grow by one per cent. South Africa and Germany held their prices while all other countries saw them fall. Argentina saw the biggest price drop, with its average bottle price down four per cent to £5.64. But this also resulted in a sharp increase in its volume sales soaring 39 per cent as the value of these sales grew 34 per cent.
Off License News (OLN) says that the picture was very different at the same time last year, when prices rose across the board with some up by as much as eight per cent.
Spanish wine in the UK reversed a massive decline in the past quarter. In the 12 weeks to June 20, Spanish wine volumes were flat, with value sales slipping two per cent, and an average bottle price of £5.01. Félix Solís Avantis UK accounts for around 25% of Spanish wine sold in the UK Retail (imported in India by Brindco). Its managing director Richard Cochrane says the retailer price wars had sparked the under-five pound renaissance.
 He said: 'The discounters have been doing it for a little while, and the major retailers have repositioned some products to compete. Average prices a year ago were going up, but in the past 12 weeks there has been a pretty dramatic change in direction, and shoppers are getting a great deal,’ the price drops could stop wine shoppers migrating to other categories.
Faster Growth of Plonk consumption in India
In India the two-buck chuck is literally in the category of wines selling for under Rs. 150-160 which is the fastest growing category despite no incentives allowed by the government in general in terms of price wars. This is primarily due to the growth in the new wine drinking population in the lower to lower middle classes, a majority of which dilute the sweetness of these wines by adding cheap rum, vodka or any other liquor giving it a better ‘balance’ in sweetness and the ‘current’ they are looking for. ‘Goana’ by John Distilleries in Bangalore sells around 30,000 cases of this fortified wine in Karnataka alone and is perhaps the largest seller of these wines. Even Sula has exceeded 250,000 a year of their Nashik Port which is not fortified only because the Maharashtra law makes it impractical to make fortified wines.
The growth in this segment is over 30% a year when the rest of the wines are optimistically expecting a growth of 15-20%.
USA trading up
The Study published by Daily Mail comes at a time when another Study conducted by UC Davies notices that the Americans are trading up with a substantial increase in the segment between $10-16 in Retail. Details will be carried out in a future issue.
Subhash Arora |