Wine won't outgrow beer 'for 20 years'
It will take at least 20 years or more of continuous growth for wine sales to overtake beer sales in pubs, a leading research analyst claimed this week.
Graham Page of AC Nielsen made the prediction in response to a survey conducted by TNS that claimed 'for the time wine sales had overtaken beer in the off-trade. The report estimated £1.97bn a year is now spent on wine, with beer sales declining to £1.79bn.
Nielsen's own figures for the moving annual total to May show that the off-trade market was worth around £11bn with wine sales amounting to £4.7bn compared with beer at £3.1bn.
During the same period, on-trade sales stood at £21bn with beer accounting for £13bn with wine at £2.7bn. Page said: 'Over the year, wine sales have been in decline, or at best, static. He said one of the difficulties experienced when assessing wine sales came from the increasing usage of larger glasses with 175ml and 250ml replacing the 125ml measure. 'Nowadays, if someone orders a 250ml measure, there is no way of knowing whether they are drinking more or just having a 250ml glass where they would previously had two 125ml glasses.
Page said the socio-economic factors were in place that could lead to the growth of wine in pubs, but sales would have to grow for at least 20 years before they would match beer sales.
