Organic wine sales surge by over a third in a year, with sparkling wine driving growth
The worldwide consumption of organic wine is set to reach one billion bottles within five years, more than doubling in the space of a decade, as consumers embrace more environmentally friendly products.
This is according to new research by Millésime Bio, the leading organic wine trade fair which revealed that organic wine consumption is set to increase to 976 million bottles by 2023, a 34% increase from the 729 milion bottles that were consumed in 2018.
This represents a doubling of consumption from 441m bottles in 2013. And this increase is in stark contrast to the steady decline in global wine consumption overall, reflecting the ongoing shift towards wines produced to higher standards of sustainability.
Organic wine is expected to account for 3.5% of global wine consumption in 2023, up from 2.6% in 2018 and just 1.5% in 2013. Leading the growth in organic wine is organic sparkling, which rose by an average of over 19% a year between 2013 and 2018 in the five key markets studied, namely France, Italy, Spain, Germany and the US, where the market was worth a combined €3.3 billion euros at the end of last year.
France is leading the charge, and is expected to become the world’s largest organic wine consumer by 2023, accounting for one in five bottles, overtaking Germany which will account for over 17% of organic wine conumption. The US will move into third place, overtaking the UK which will represent 9.3% of organic wine consumed, or some 91m bottles.
To keep up with soaring demand, conversion to organic viticulture is gathering pace in all leading wine-producing countries. By 2023, Spain is forecast to have 160,000 hectares of organic vineyards, three times the coverage of 2013. France will consolidate its position with the second-largest area dedicated to organic vineyards, at around 115,000 hectares. Italy, the largest volume producer and exporter, will increase organic vineyard coverage to over 96,000 hectares.
“This new research demonstrates how more and more consumers around the world are choosing organic wines as they reject the use of pesticides and other unnatural products that damage the environment and can enter the food chain,” said Nicolas Richarme, President of SudVinBio. “This trend will only increase as large and small vignerons switch to more sustainable winemaking, and retailers stock a larger range of organic wines to meet rising consumer demand.”
Millésime Bio’s study comes ahead of its organic wine trade show, now into its 27th edition, which will take place in Montpellier, France, on January 27-29, 2020 and is the largest annual trade fair exclusively for organic wine. It is anticipating 1,300 organic wine producers from 22 countries to be in attendance, in addition to some 7,000 international buyers.