Tendencies of wine

The whole world is changing, and with it are the consumer trends. And, obviously, the wine industry is changing as well. 

Wine Intelligence, the consulting firm specializing in the wine business, has released its annual predictions for the wine industry in next months and, of course, the can is part of this near future (… as you can see, Zeena is always one step ahead).

Sustainability, lightweight packaging, wine in cans… These are some of the aspects for which the cans are the future of wine! It almost feels like they are talking about us!

Alcoholic beverages have been one of the world’s most resilient product categories during Covid (if they lock me up, at least give me some wine!). The ability to adapt of this category was demonstrated when their main channels (on-premise, foodservices…) closed or partially closed, they quickly moved to more accessible channels such as e-commerce or retail.  

Do you want to know what the main challenges will be that we will have to face this year? Then read on!

Wine Intelligence has named 5 predictions and trends for the wine world, which they believe will mark the new era of wine, let’s see what you think:

They will finally got serious about “lightweight packaging” and everything related to reducing the weight of glass packaging.

The wine industry is a traditional industry, many consumers associate the bottle with the quality of the wine, it seems more environmentally friendly than plastic, and it seems to reflect the values and traditions of wine. However, a standard wine bottle has a dry weight of about 500g (there are bottles weighing up to 1 kg!), which represents 29% of the carbon footprint of a wine (we didn’t make this up, this was found out by a 2011 study conducted by PE International). There are even bottles with a much higher weight. A light bottle reduces approximately 1 gram of carbon for every gram of glass. Can you imagine how many grams of carbon we would reduce if there were no bottles? And we haven’t even taken into account the money that will be saved in transport yet. 

Considering the current situation and the tensions in the global supply chain (due to the rising costs of raw materials, fuel and transportation), producers will be forced to save as much as possible. 

And that’s why Zeena went ahead of the trend and switched to cans, as they are much lighter, take up less space and, most importantly, are a lot less harmful for the environment.

Luxury wine will have to polish its sustainability

Luxury, if it wants to appeal to younger consumers, will have to demonstrate that it is sustainable. It will be up to them to align their values and actions with those of the next generation of consumers, committing to act sustainably, without compromising the quality of the product itself. Quite a challenge. 

Wine consumers are consuming less but of higher quality, here luxury wine is one of the main beneficiaries of this new trend. Given the current situation, as household incomes start to fall and travel starts to increase again, consumers are likely to become more and more demanding when it comes to spending their money. 

Premiumization will continue in 2022

If we try to look for any upside from the current situation for the wine sector, it has been how consumers have allocated budgets that previously would have been spent on outings or travel on higher quality food and beverages for the home. 

What factors will increase the wine premiumization?

• The reluctance of some consumers, who will allocate most of their budget to home entertainment and leisure.
• The influence of Millennials in the wine market, drivers of the “drink less but better” movement.
• Supply chain crisis, combined with the disastrous northern hemisphere wine harvest in 2021 (which reduced wine volumes by 18%) along with rising energy, dry goods and transportation costs. 

Canned wine will have low-alcohol options 

Canned wine is the future, and it is becoming more and more fashionable (not even Harry Styles is setting the trend that we are), it has made a great start in 2021 and will continue in 2022. However, there will be certain new trends, like creating product subcategories that respond to the two growing trends of 2020: the portable and one-glass “low alcohol” format. Stay tuned, there is more stuff coming soon from Zeena!

The wine industry must fight for global talent

Wine offers an unparalleled mix of intellectual challenges, an industry that calls for its leaders to be partial farmers, chemists, production experts, marketing geeks… wow. This is why it obviously has to attract talented people. And it will continue to do so, as it is an industry with multiple roads for renewal, growth and revolution. 

And these were the trends of the wine gurus from “Wine Intelligence”, what do you think? What do you think about these trends?

Cheers!