Prosecco sales grow by a third in one year, against static wine sector
Sales are being driven by consumers’ desire for a highly drinkable, celebratory drink at a reasonable price, says the retail insight company.
Prosecco also puts the fizz in a wine market that saw sales of still wine fall in 2015.
Prosecco sales now total £356m / $505m (39m liters in volume), having grown 34% over the last year. Champagne sales have increased 1%, up to £251m / $356m or 10m liters) and the wine category as a whole has grown by 0.4%.
Shoppers are turning to supermarket own label prosecco more than any individual brands, with own label prosecco taking 12% of the market. The most popular prosecco brand (Plaza Centro), meanwhile, takes 6%.
Across the wine category
The data tracks product sales across the major supermarkets between February 28, 2015 and February 27, 2016.
The demand for prosecco has helped create a ‘healthy sales increase’ in the sparkling wine category, says IRI, with the sector increasing 15% in the last year to £905m / $1,284m (85m liters).
Yet overall wine category sales only grew 0.4% year on year, reaching a total of £5.9bn / $8.4bn. Still wine sales were down 1.8%. Sales of white wine fell 1.6%, while red wine dropped 1.2%.
New world wines outperformed old world wines, with wine sales from Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina all growing.
Toby Magill, head of beer, wine and spirits at IRI, told BeverageDaily that the lackluster overall growth figures for wine could have several explanations. Firstly, the data looks at supermarkets, whereas other channels such as discounters and convenience stores have been growing and increasing stocks of wine.
It has also been a tough year for wine overall, with retailers cutting back their ranges (Tesco, for example, pledged to cut its range by 30% to simplify choice for consumers across all food and drink categories) and this could have affected wine sales over the key Christmas period.
But prosecco is popular with consumers for a number of reasons. To start with, the still wine choice can appear intimidating to the average consumer, whereas people know what cues they're looking for in a celebratory wine. "Still wine is fragmented, and it's not an easy thing to shop," he said. "Sparkling wine, it's obvious.
"People are looking for that luxurious, aspirational look, but delivered for a reasonable price.
"All the biggest sellers in prosecco were private labels, so consumers are not buying for the brand, they're buying prosecco at a certain price point, that delivers everything they need."
Magill said wine has to fight other popular alcoholic beverage categories to get the attention of retailers and consumers.
“Wine will continue to fight other sectors for shelf space in stores, and it will struggle to gain the upper hand because it doesn’t have the dominant players that the beer and spirits categories do.
“To compete more successfully, brands and retailers need to focus on developing and offering a really clear category vision.”
