The economic crisis has largely bypassed the German wine market in the past year. According to a statement by the German Wine Institute (DWI), GfK market data shows the sales value of wine in Germany - including all sales outlets, including supermarkets, discounters, specialist retailers and cellar door sales by wineries - increased once more, by 1.2%.
Total wine sales volumes were down slightly, by 1.5%. "Overall, we had quite a stable wine market in 2009. Contributing factors have included a trend from on-trade consumption towards more at-home consumption“, comments DWI chief executive Monika Reule on the current situation in the wine market. 2009 saw German wines develop marginally weaker than the total market, with a volume decline of 4.5%, but managed to slightly improve unit prices, to maintain a very stable total sales value level. On average, a bottle of German wine was sold in the German retail trade (supermarkets) at a price of 2,81 €/litre, an increase of 14 cents. In specialist retailers and cellar door sales, the average price is now 5,65 €/l. Given the huge amount of international wines available on our price-sensitive domestic market, price increases can result in rapid decreases in sales levels“, explained Reule.

Although they had to concede one percentage point each in terms of the total sales value (54%) and sales volume (48%) of total wine sales in Germany, German producers remained by far the market leaders in their home country. France and Italy are ranked second and third respectively, both pretty constant at 13% market share in both values and volume, followed by Spain with a six per cent share. In 2009, wines from the New World accounted for a market share of five per cent in total. The red wine boom of recent years appears to have flattened slightly. Although in 2009 slightly more red than white wine was sold - at 51% red to 4o% white wine in volume terms, the share of reds fell by two per cent, this slack was taken up by white wines. The remaining 9% of wines were rosé wines, the share there remained unchanged.
(MW/press release)