The alcoholic beverages market will restart growing in 2025. But not wine

The trend revealed from the most recent reports by IWSR - International Wine & Spirits Research and the Worlds Spirits Alliance, which brings together the topmost important alcohol producers in the world (based on IWSR and Oxford Economics data), have shown that the alcoholic beverages market, in all likelihood, will restart growing from 2025, following a quite complicated 2023, while 2024 is still dominated by much uncertainty. Recovery will be driven by the big markets of India and China and the United States, though companies and brands will have to deal with a more and more complicated macroeconomic and regulatory landscape. At any rate, growth will not be a “boom”, but rather very slow, as forecasts indicate +1% per year until 2028, in volume and value. This trend should apply to all alcoholic beverages, however, wine, in the medium-short term, could experience many more challenges than beer and spirits. As a matter of fact, spirits, in volume, could overtake the nectar of Bacchus. According to World Spirits Alliance, in 2022, at the global level, spirits accounted for 9.9% of the market in volume (2.67 billion cases), just behind wine, at 10.4% (2.8 billion cases), while beer, instead, dominated at 75.2% in volume. In value, however, spirits dominate, at 42% of the market (468 billion US dollars value in global retail), ahead of beer, at 40% (446 billionUS dollars), and wine, at 18% (206 billion euros). The picture shows, moreover, substantial stability of the wine market in value, which increased + 2% between 2019 and 2022, while other drinks performed much faster, that is, beer at +13%, and spirits at +16%. Therefore, if this trend is confirmed, spirits will be overtaking wine in volume as well, very shortly. We must, obviously, take all of this with a grain of salt, and take into consideration that economic pressures on the cost of living in many important markets, the health-conscious push, the increase in costs of raw materials and transport, as well as International tensions that have weighed heavily on 2023 results, are all still very hot topics in the current scenario.
Looking at wine, specifically, the IWSR that premiumization has suffered a setback, since the premium range was at -3%, while the higher price ranges fared better (the super-premium range was stable, while it was down -2% for the even higher range). As we mentioned, the alcohol market overall, should return to growth, though slightly, according to forecasts. However, the situation is less rosy for wine. According to IWSR, in 2023 the drop in volumes on the market was -4%, the forecast is showing a further -1% decrease per year in quantity, from now until 2028, and substantially stable values.