Obviously the Swedish wine market is radically different than the US one, but because of the monopoly there it does offer a very wide base of statistics. Over 10 million consumers pretty much all buy through that regulated system. Therefore it can be interesting to view it as a proxy to see bigger movements or trends within the wine industry. So let’s start:
Interesting numbers here are that red wine is still king. For every 10 bottles of red, about 6-7 bottles of whites are sold. This follows my findings roughly in my own winery. Also note that consumption rate is now declining again after pandemic (no great surprise) and you can see at the very far bottom right how all categories are now negative.
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Italy hovers high above all the others in volume, with France, Spain, South Africa below in that order. Sweden is price sensitive and Italy has always produced a copious amount of cheap wine. I’d be very surprised if the number 1 spot hasn’t been held by Italy for at least 3 decades. As long as I can remember that seems to have been the case.
Look how Spain and Germany are on the uptick. I’m not surprised about Germany, but I am a little surprised about Spain. But then I listened to a podcast and they were also talking about how Rioja and Priorat etc had been so “uncool” in the market for so long, they felt it was bound to come back soon. This statistic seems to support that.
And finally, notice again how low down US wine exports are - our wines are not price competitive at all. With South Africa and Chile etc you can claim labor disadvantaged and low production costs as a reason they sell more, but that it’s not true for Australia or New Zeeland (who have very little migrant workforce and high labor costs) and they are way ahead of us in sales. Some lessons there, I think.
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Obviously, Sweden being early adopters and very big on bag-in-box, you can see it dwarfing bottle sales. Is this a trend we’ll see here in a decade/s?
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Notice again how Spain, Germany and Australia is on the uptick in volume. Cava is also a big increaser, which is something I know is starting to get more traction here in the US as well (I have a producer friend who imports it to the states). Notice how California sales have dropped, but honestly not by that much. Seems to be one of the smaller drops.
Very interesting! What are the vertical bars in the first graph? It looks like something big happened with rose in 2020, yet red wine is still number 1.
Also, should probably mention that Germany is “Tyskland.” That is the one that is most different between Swedish and English.
I think the statistics are interesting but one thing you are not factoring in is the European Union. Situated in Germany 20% of my turnover is in Sweden, and that turnover consists of 99 % Champagne. Similairly with Italy, I sell more Aligoté in Italy than I do in any other country, no idea why.
I am a small business so this might not affect the statisitcs much. I have a number of colleagues not selling champagne, who also say the same, without the scandinavian countries, there businesses would be obselete.
There are websites in Spain which ship to anywhere within europe for fantastic price, sometimes special offers for free. Any serious spanish wine collector will buy from them.
When I had a restaurant one really good customer just wanted to drink PS Aalto. From the german importer to get one bottle, you had to buy so much crap. From Vinissimus, cheaper with spanish tax and no quantity limits.
I would be hesitant to make any conclusions about the US, or even other countries, based on this. Seeing South Africa as the fourth largest source, and bag-in-a-box as over half sales, seems somewhat idiosyncratic to me. This says more to me about the uniqueness of markets and how countries develop different wine cultures in hard to predict ways.
Any overall market analysis like this glosses over the vast differences in buying and consumption habits for the different segments of the market. Super-market/manufactured wine, fine wine (also known as Berserker tipple), and restaurant/bar wine have some overlaps but are mostly very far apart. Others could come up with other segmentations. This has been discussed here many times, but the trends in the different segments are what really matter.
Interesting but I would be quite cautious about making any conclusion based on the Swedish monopoly market. I am quite sure there are a lot of peculiarities…
Surely a lot of rules related to shelf space, and the most interesting wines (unless it’s a producer with a lot of volume, yet having high quality) are usually available on the temporary assortment.
Bag in box has been popular for quite some time (price driven), most of us would not touch any of those wines. I think the Texier version is the only expedition I can think of, though I’m not sure if that’s being sold in Sweden.
As with the case of Norway (someone shared in another thread) high quality wines shows up at very reasonable prices.
As Donald mention another route is private import or even some ways of bypassing the monopoly. But that for sure only applies to high end wines.
I don’t have the links for them but XChateau podcast had some interviews with managers at a couple of the Scandinavian monopoly systems. Interesting, especially if one cares about things like planograms.
I have only visited a few of the Swedish systembolagets (where they made me pay full price even though I waved my murican Yankees hat in the air) and one thing that struck me about the US wines that were available was how they all seemed to supermarket bottom shelvers. Except that there were some Ridge Zin/blends and Beringer KV CS, which were basically at the same prices one would find stateside. Perhaps those firms were willing to absorb some margin hit to ‘represent’ their wines globally.
I only used their online site to figure out their locations, but the podcasts suggested that customers can order anything in the system, and have it sent to their local store. (K&L offers that too, although I’m not sure how many take up that benefit)
I live in Sweden and buy all my wine from sources outside of the monopoly. It is pretty easy to have wine shipped here. The monopoly has occasional amazing deals on highly sought after wine, but you have to fight tooth and nail to get them.
Bag in box and ripassa style wines are hugely popular with casual drinkers.
Drinking wine in restaurants here is an entirely different story.
Watching from this side of the pond (Finland) it seems to me you guys have a pretty great selection and prices in your monopoly all things considered. But then, for a wine geek no one retailer’s selection can ever be enough.
Funny thing, but this thread reminded me that even though I grew up in Finland and have visited Sweden hundreds of times, the only Systembolaget I’ve ever been in was in the Caribbean.
