US to gain 16m wine drinkers by 2025

With an extra 16 million wine drinkers forecast to join the trendsetting American market in the next 10 years, it’s a country that the trade cannot afford to ignore.

Wine Intelligence CEO Richard Halstead (Photo: Wine Intelligence)

North American “regular wine drinkers” will increase from 93 million today – which is 40% of the adult population – to 109m, or 44% of all adults, by 2025, according to a Wine Intelligence report called “Future Wine Consumers in the US Market”.

Wine Intelligence chief operating officer Richard Halstead commented: “Whether one likes it or not, the fortunes of the world wine industry are indelibly linked to the behaviour of the American wine drinker over the next decade.”

Continuing, he said, “The USA is the most valuable market for wine on earth, and our report shows that changing population and cultural norms are likely to mean that it will consolidate its top ranking over the next years.”

According to IWSR data, the US is currently the world’s largest wine market, accounting for 339.6m cases in 2014, 13% of global sales of 2,635m cases.

The market analyst forecasts that the country will increase by 11.3% over the next five years from 2014 to total 377.9m cases by the end of 2018, almost exactly sustaining its growth rate of 11.6% during the past five years.

Furthermore, US wine sales expansion will come in contrast to other major wine consumers, with the second, third and fourth biggest markets – France, Italy and Germany respectively – all projected to decline over next five years, according to the IWSR.

Nevertheless, the fifth biggest market, China and Hong Kong, is expected to grow by almost 70% from 144.8m to 180.7m cases.

As reported by the drinks business earlier this month, customs data from the last nine months shows that the rapid rate of growth in China is back, following three years of slowing sales due to resident Xi Jingping’s austerity drive, which began in early 2013.