Wine, mini formats and restaurant serving are growing

Inflation and health pressures are changing wine consumption, boosting sales by the glass in restaurants and smaller format bottles in large-scale distribution. A trend that statistics are still struggling to appreciably detect but which is evident both in restaurants and in supermarkets, first and foremost in France, a country that often leads the way in wine on trends destined to rapidly establish themselves elsewhere.

Another key aspect emerging is how this repositioning of the offer towards different formats and sales methods is taking place under the banner of quality. Both the offer of wines by the glass in restaurants and that of 0.375 litre bottles are in fact favouring medium-high-end wines, including Champagnes. "In the smaller format bottles in France, we are also beginning to find Gran Cru, the top of the French offer," explains the president of Ceev (the association of European wine industries), Ignacio Sanchez Recarte, "with the clear intention of making those wines more accessible. A couple at a restaurant instead of taking a conventional bottle of Champagne that they might not finish opts for a half bottle and a quantity of wine to be consumed with dinner that is compatible with driving home. The trend is not episodic but is a slow change because the bottling system, packaging, logistics need to be changed'. A counter-offensive under the banner of drinking less but better, therefore, also in response to health campaigns (so far perceived more strongly in France than in Italy) and pushing for a significant reduction in alcohol consumption. The reinforcement of the offer of wines by the glass and in smaller bottles is also an attempt by French producers to shake up the cards and move the market in the face of the drop in consumption that is affecting even Champagne and that is also testified to by the veritable collapse of 'en primeur' quotations in Bordeaux.

In Italy, the trend seems to be intercepted by the main denomination in terms of volume, Prosecco Doc (more than 600 million bottles produced each year and more than 80% of which are sold abroad) and the true world outpost of Made in Italy wine. "The French market is giving us great satisfaction," explains the vice-president of the Prosecco Doc Consortium, Sandro Botter, "and even in the first half of this year the figures are growing. For us, the trend towards reduced-format bottles has already been going on for some time in France as elsewhere. We are particularly noticing it for the even smaller packages of half bottles: the 0.20 litre bottles. Faced with a drop in sales of the 0.75-litre format, which lost 3 % in the last year, the mini-packs made a 3 % progress in 2023, marking a growth of 67 % from 2020 to today and now represent a 4 % share of total production.

But beyond the reduced formats, the sale of wine by the glass in restaurants is gaining strength. "The decline in overall wine consumption is an objective fact," explains the deputy director and head of the Fipe studies office, Luciano Sbraga, "and is linked both to health reasons and to changes in lifestyles and inflation. In this context, both supply and consumption by the glass is growing, which now accounts in volume for around 10% of wine sales in the 140,000 Italian restaurants. This is a method that originated in the days of the points licence to avoid driving penalties on the way home, but which is now becoming more and more qualified with the offer of premium wines also increasingly paired with dishes in tasting menus. For managers, however, the offer is still limited to a few bottles and cannot cover the entire wine list because once a bottle is opened, it must be sold out in a short time. A help in this regard may come from increasingly sophisticated pouring facilities that can ensure the integrity of the product even after the bottle has been uncorked.

The trend towards large-format and small-format wines that is evident in France is still not registered in Italian supermarkets. "On supermarket shelves," explains Virgilio Romano business, insight director of Circana, a company active in sales monitoring, "0.375 litre bottles represent 0.4% of wine sales in volume, rising to 1% in value. However, we are noticing a shift in the offer towards higher quality labels and we think that in the future this trend may strengthen in line with the offer of single-portion food and gastronomic products dedicated to couples or singles".