Australian wine over-indexes with Aussie wine drinkers in terms of quality and market penetration, according to research undertaken by Wine Australia.
Wine Australia engages Wine Intelligence to conduct an annual brand health study on the Australian wine category in key markets across the globe, including the domestic market. The measures tracked are market penetration, quality perceptions and attitudes to Australian wine.
According to Wine Intelligence, there are 9.2 million regular wine drinkers in Australia and 84 per cent of them drink Australian wine. This is more than double those who say they drink wines from New Zealand (40 per cent) and around four times that for wines from France (22 per cent) and Italy (20 per cent). The Australian share of regular wine drinkers increased by one percentage point compared to 2019. The other three countries recorded declines of between two and four percentage points.
Proportionally, more females (87 per cent) drink Australian wine compared to males (81 per cent). The older the person in Australia, the more likely they are to drink Australian wine. Figure One shows 61 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old regular wine drinkers drink Australian wine compared to 95 per cent for those aged 65 and over.
In terms of the quality perceptions (a maximum score of 10), Australian wine (8.77) was rated marginally behind New Zealand (8.80) but well ahead of France (8.64) and Italy (8.44). France dropped from first place in 2019 (8.92). The 55 to 64-year-old age group rated the quality of Australian wine the highest, with almost two-thirds scoring Australian wine quality at least nine out of 10. In contrast, 34 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old regular wine drinkers scored Australian wine quality at least nine. Interestingly, this youngest age bracket rated the quality of imported wines higher than Australian wine, with Italian wines (61 per cent), New Zealand (55 per cent), Spain (51 per cent) and France (36 per cent) all receiving a greater proportion of scores of at least nine.
In terms of associations with a range of statements, Australian wine over-indexes significantly on most measures in comparison to the major imported wine categories, especially Italy and Spain (see Figure Two). Australian wine is most strongly associated with having distinctive wine producing regions. Associations with the most room to improve are being known for being experimental and innovative and in the area of sustainability. But it should be noted that Australia outperforms the reported imported wine categories in both these measures. Also, for the sustainability measure, there was less variation by age group with a low of 63 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds and a high of 69 per cent for the 55 to 64-year-old group.
This article was written by Peter Bailey, Manager Market Insights, Wine Australia, for the July issue of National Liquor News, which you can read online here.
Image taken and supplied by Brett Keeping from Two Rivers Winery in the Hunter Valley.