South Africa is now selling more wine in the UK than France. You would have got very long odds for that happening if you’d placed a bet 15 years ago.
The latest Nielsen stats put three New World countries on the UK’s best-selling rostrum: Australia, the US (well, California) along with the Safas. What a turn around in 20 years. According to the OIV, new world producing wine countries had 3% of the market in the late 1980s but in 2008, it was 30% and its share is clearly continuing to grow.
In the past year, South African wine sales have increased 20% by volume to 12.27m cases, while French wine sales continued on their slide into the abyss, dropping 12% to 12.26m cases.
Interestingly, South Africa released its volume figures but not its value figures, which leaves us guessing. Anyone venturing into a UK supermarket, will see there are plenty of deals on South African wine, which have been driving volumes and not value.
As Australia and Chile have seen, cheap isn’t cheerful for your wine industry. If you sell at less than a fiver, that damages perceptions of your wine industry and it’s difficult to claw your way out of that.
Nevertheless, South Africa has come a long way and the World Cup is coming in June putting the country firmly on the map.
