Off-trade wine up 2%
Those countries showing most significant value growth included Chile (growth worth over €7 million or an increase of 6% to €125 million), Italy (with growth up 6.6% to €60.7m), New Zealand (experiencing growth of 18.1% to €36.8m), Argentina (up 19.1% through growth of around €2.5m) and Portugal (sales up 86.5% to €3.12m) which together accounted for retail sales growth of over €20 million at the expense of countries like Australia (down 5.3% to €82.7m), the US (down 6.7% to 28.52m) and Germany which witnessed a 6.6% decline in sales value to €4.24 million. All other categories tended to show little growth or decline.
The top-selling wine label in both the on- and off-trades emanated from Santa Rita Estates. In the off-trade Santa Rita grew sales by 34.3% or over €8 million as a result of a 42% spurt in volumes to 320,000 cases. Following Santa Rita’s performance were labels such as Villa Maria (which grew sales here by 17.3% to €10 million via a 17% increase in volume sales to 83,000 cases), Cono Sur (which grew sales by €1.9 million or 23.7% to €9.9 million as volumes rose 31% to 10,000 cases) and Dona Paula which grew volumes by 13% to 50,000 cases through sales worth €480,000.
Australian wine yellowtail grew sales here 21.6% to €6.8 million through a volume sales increase of 21.5% to 61,500 cases and Faustino showed sales growth of 13.4% to €4.2 million through a 9.5% increase to 31,000 cases according to Nielsen.
Las Moras, an Argentinean wine, grew sales by 109.5% last year, but from a small base of just €1.3 million.
These, along with Villa Maria (growth up by around €1.5 million), Las Moras (growth up over €1.4 million via a 115% volume increase to 22,000 cases) & yellow tail (growth up over €1.2 million) were the label brand winners at the expense of private label, Wolf Blass, McGuigan and Blossom Hill.
Other Chilean labels (with the exception of Underraga) lost sales momentum here during the year thus putting the net overall sales increase for Chilean wines at €7.3 million.
