America is no longer a young wine drinking country–compared to China!
Yahoo News says that four factors in China are driving “a soaring number of consumers” to drink wine.
- more affordable prices
- globalized palates
- younger demographics
- e-commerce
Assuming this is true (and it appears to be), I thought it would be interesting to see how these same four factors are playing out in America.
More affordable prices. We certainly see a plethora of affordable wines for sale here. The Yahoo article doesn’t define “more affordable,” but let’s say that in the U.S., that would be $15 or less per bottle. There’s a ton of wines in that price range available here, so we’re even with the Chinese on that.
Globalized palates. Again, no definition, but one has to assume this means that the Chinese like the same flavors of Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and so on, as we do. Since these wine varieties are widely available on the international market, including here in the States, that makes us again even with the Chinese.
Younger demographics. The article refers to “urban, educated Chinese consumers in their 20s and 30s” who are driving the soaring sales. Well, we have people like that, too, but from what I hear, a lot of them are preferring liquor and beer to wine these days, so that may be keeping our own consumption down.
E-commerce. As I blogged the other day, e-commerce is indeed becoming “the distribution model of choice” in China, although it’s not entirely clear to me why this should be helping to fuel increased demand there. In my previous post, I interpreted e-commerce as meaning a business-to-business model. The Yahoo interpretation is much broader than that, and includes consumers buying wine directly from the Internet, rather than from brick-and-mortar places, both on-premise and off-premise. We certainly see direct-to-consumer sales via the Internet in this country, but it doesn’t seem to be contributing to greatly increased consumption. According to Wine Institute, our per capita has held pretty steady, with total wine consumption per resident per year being 2.4 gallons in 2006 and rising only to 2.73 gallons in 2012.
I think wine hit China with such drama and uniqueness in the last five years that it was bound to excite consumers, especially younger ones with a little extra money to spend. It reminds me of the atmosphere in America (or, at least, in the coastal cities) in the 1970s and 1980s, when wine really was the most exciting alcoholic beverage. It was the zeitgeist in America that fueled wine’s meteoric rise, but zeitgeists change. Right now, wine is in that same position in China, so it’s not surprising that these western-oriented, educated urban drinkers are buying and liking it. They want to feel, and be perceived as, smart, tasteful members of global society, and wine is one of the best portals to enter that rank.
The funny thing about China is that is changes the way we view ourselves in America. For my entire career, it’s been apropos to describe America as a young wine drinking country. But how can we continue to say that, now that an even younger wine drinking country is out there? On the other hand, we’re not an old wine drinking country, like France, Italy or Spain. I guess that makes the U.S. a young-to-middle aged wine drinking country. We now have several generations of wine lovers—starting with my own Baby Boom generation and extending through Gen X and Millennials—each of which has discovered wine and, in the process of interpreting it for themselves, ended up reinventing it. The same will happen in China, and faster than it occurred here, because everything happens faster these days.
China is certainly an interesting place when it comes to wine. You are probably spot on with the analysis. I toured through China for 2 weeks in March and spent a few days in Ningxia wine country.
It makes me think that two of the points sort of contradict each other.
affordable wine & globalized palates
Have you ever tasted the cheap wine in China? Yikes!! Undrinkable. Even a bottle I paid around $20USD for was so bad we dumped it after the first sip. The good news is that there is a small league of quality wine makers doing their best, which is pretty good. But per usual, those wines start at about $30USD.
🙂
Alleah
Bliss Wine Imports