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What to do with red wine?

Lorenzo Biscontin

2024 closes with strong concerns about the trend in wine consumption at a global level: the OIV has estimated consumption of 221 million hl for 2023, which represents a drop of -2.6% compared to 2022 and -7% compared to the average of the last 10 years.

The numbers for the first half of this year and the end-of-year impressions gathered by producers suggest a further decrease for 2024 as well. The data from the USA, the world’s leading market, is significant, as in the first 10 months it indicated a -7.2% decrease compared to 2023.

This decrease in wine consumption is actually a decrease in consumption of red wine only and is a long-term phenomenon: an analysis published by the OIV in 2023 shows how in the period 2000 – 2021 the consumption of white and rosé wine has grown constantly, while that of red wine has been declining since 2007.

In the five-year period 2017-2021, red wine consumption worldwide represented 48.3% of the total, compared to 51.3% in the five-year period 2000 – 2004.

A graph drawn up by the American Association of Wine Economist on Agrimer data shows how the decline in turnover of all French wine in French super and hyper markets in the period 1995 – 2022 is entirely due to the decrease in sales of red wine, with white and rosé on the rise.

While the problem is clear in terms of market data, the same cannot be said about its causes, that is, the reasons why people are reducing their consumption of red wine. There is no publicly available consumer research by any of the numerous institutions and companies operating in the wine industry worldwide and I personally have not heard of it from opinion leaders and/or managers of wineries or consortia, whether Italian or foreign.

In the absence of objective and specific information, the sector is moving towards a widespread and dangerous simplification: since the consumer is increasing consumption of white and rosé wines, he will prefer “fresher” red wines.

A simplification that I consider dangerous at least because it ignores the fact that the “freshness” of white wines derives first of all from the fact that they are drunk cold.

While waiting for studies on the reasons for consuming and not consuming red wine, which I hope will be carried out as soon as possible, given the importance of the problem for the entire wine business, I will try to connect the available dots to address the problem of the decline in red wine consumption.

The short answer is that it may exists a potential market for balanced and light red wines. “Balanced and light” is a different concept than “fresh” and the taste profile I have in mind it is extremely different from that of the majority of wines presented as “fresh” I have happened to taste in recent months.

If you want the long version answer, make yourself comfortable, because this was only the premise.

Red wine is essentially a white wine with the addition of anthocyanins and tannins.

The above statement may seem obvious, but it is instead fundamental because it is objective and unchangeable, we could say ontological, and has historically determined the differences in production, taste and consumption between white, rosè and red wines.

Without wanting to give a history of wine here, it is nevertheless necessary to remember that until at least 150 years ago the consumption of wine was the most practical and economical way to consume a drink that was certainly healthy compared to water.

In this context, the quality of wine was fixed in space, that is, for each territory, quality wine was the one produced in that place, and in time, that is, it was always produced in the same way and therefore remained unchanged over time.

The sensory profile was good by definition, both because it was the only one and above all because it was assimilated naturally as part of the person’s food and drink culture. People grew up getting used to that taste.

This wine was mostly red wine, because it was technologically easier to make with an cellar facilities that did not allow to skins – must separation during pressing and fermentation temperatures control. In such situations, the antioxidant function of anthocyanins and tannins reduces the development of defects and allows the wine to age.

Red wines were therefore historically both the most popular and the most prized wines compared to whites.

With this cultural background wine arrives in the industrial economy developing after WW2, with the consequent urbanization of the population and the widening of the spectrum of available beverages (curiously, France and Italy are the two main world consumers of bottled water). This implies the shift of wine consumption from self-consumption need to hedonistic desire and, from an oenological point of view, the development of knowledge and technologies that allow to improve the production of white wines.

Especially with this cultural background that sees red wine as the wine par excellence, wine has expanded into new markets with the limited or no experience of wine production and consumption.

It is such a strong cultural background that even today if you ask an Artificial Intelligence program to generate an image with wine, without specifying its color, the wine will be red.

Beverages preferences worldwide.

To assess the prospects for red wine consumption, it is worth looking at the situation of beverage consumption in general.

The first beverage consumed in the world is tea and the second is coffee.

These are two beverages with very specific ways and moments of consumption. Compared to the other beverages, there is a high degree of separability such that they can essentially be ignored as substitutes/competitors.

They are followed by beer, soft drinks / energy drinks, spirits / cocktails and wine. Among these beverages, the degree of separability is weaker, as they are beverages that can be substituted for each other in different situations and moments of consumption.

Observing this group, it is noted that in the preferences for beverage consumption, carbonated and/or cold drinks tend to prevail.

A scenario that is favorable to sparkling wines and white and rosé wines, which are not coincidentally growing, but unfavorable to the consumption of red wine.

It is worth emphasizing that the preference for cold beverages does not only depend on people’s food culture but also on their availability of refrigerators and freezers.

The consumption of cold drinks and cocktails in the US began to grow in the 1920s with the spread of the refrigerator and then followed a similar trend in Europe after World War II.

It seems that people, if they can, prefer to drink cold.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the medium term in China, where the refrigerator has recently reached 100% penetration of households, and in the long term in India, where penetration is currently 35%.

I will leave aside the topic of the trend of reducing alcohol consumption in this analysis, not because it is not important, but to focus on the concept of “freshness” and the comparison of white and rosé wines vs. red.

Evolution of red wine consumption in the period 2000 – 2021 (source OIV).

In seeking solutions regarding the reduction of red wine consumption, it is worth noting that the shift in consumer preferences towards white and rosé wines is a phenomenon that began over twenty years ago in the main world markets, that is to say when we were at the top of the (presumed) “parkerization” of the wine market.

It was when red wines from Bordeaux, USA, Australia, Chile, Italian Supertuscans, etc., characterized by high alcohol content, full body, high concentration of color and fruity aromas, were establishing themselves on the international market.

Despite the common opinion (the very dangerous “common sense”) believed, and still believes, that these were the wines in fashion at the time, in 2000 red wines represented less than 50% of consumption by volume in the USA, Italy, UK, Spain, Argentina and Australia. Respectively the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th and 11th market for consumption by volume at a global level. And from 2002 to 2021 in all these markets the share of consumption of red wines continued to decrease, with the sole exception of Argentina.

In France (the world’s 2nd largest wine consumption market by volume), the market share of red wines by volume fell below 50% in 2011 and has continued to decline since then, reaching 39% in 2021.

In Germany (the world’s 4th largest market by volume), red wine fell below 50% of the market only in 2016, but it should be noted that most of the red wines consumed in Germany are domestically produced, therefore with organoleptic profiles that go precisely in the direction of “freshness” and not “opulence”.

In Russia (the world’s 7th largest market by volume), red wine is worth more than 50% of the market by volume in almost all the years of the 2000 – 2021 series, but it should be noted the preponderant weight of imported sweet and semi-sweet red wines.

Does this mean that the entire wine sector has made a big mistake globally over the last 25 years? In a way, yes: it was dazzled by China’s tremendous growth from consuming 8 million hl of red wine in 2020 to consuming 16 million in 2017. If you go back in the time series the growth will be even stronger and China demand was directed to “Parker’s style” wine.

In other words, the alleged global preference for opulent red wines was primarily a Chinese phenomenon. When China’s consumption collapsed to pre-2000 levels, all the issues that already existed on the market came to a head.

From this brief excursus it is clear how arbitrary, and therefore dangerous, it is to say that consumption has shifted to white and rosé wines because a certain style of red wine has gone out of fashion. Consumption had already shifted when opulent red wines were in fashion (according to industry professionals) and this trend has simply continued.

The same goes for the increase in average temperatures: consumption of white and rosé wines exceeded that of red wines even before the increase in temperature in the last twenty years following climate change.

On the concept of freshness of wine.

I thought it was appropriate to dedicate a paragraph to this concept considering the frequency we hear in the wine business about the need to present “fresh” red wines on the market in order to intercept new consumer trends.

As often happens when it comes to wine, also in this case the problem of the meaning given to words arises, in this case “fresh”. I will try to do so by taking the point of view of the non-expert consumer who attributes to words their common sense, i.e. that majority of the people who believes that “extra dry” is the driest among the different versions of sparkling wines.

In this sense we could say that a drink is “fresh” based on the temperature of consumption and when after drinking it the sensation on the palate remains clean, neutral. For example, neither tea is defined as fresh, because it is drunk hot, nor iced vodka, because after drinking it a warm sensation is released on the palate due to the alcohol content.

In the case of white and rosé wines, we have both the freshness that comes from drinking them at a temperature between 6° / 8° C and that left on the palate by the acidity that cleans and “refreshes” the mouth at the end of the sip.

In red wine, the presence of tannins makes the situation very different and more complicated. It should be remembered that the three types of grape ripening, technological (ratio between sugar content and acidity), polyphenolic (concentration of tannins in the grape seeds and skin) and aromatic (concentration of aromatic components) rarely occur simultaneously.

Due to early technological ripening caused by global warming, the choice of the moment of harvest increasingly becomes a compromise choice between the three different ripenings, partly sacrificing the polyphenolic and aromatic ones to avoid having excessively alcoholic wines.

It is worth remembering that polyphenols in general, and tannins in particular, are responsible for the gustatory sensation of bitterness and the tactile sensation of astringency, the perception of which increases as the acidity of the wine increases and the serving temperature decreases.

Bitternes and astringency characterize red wines produced in cold and rainy climates, where the grapes struggle to reach the sugar concentration necessary for technological maturation and it is therefore necessary to harvest without any of the three maturations having reached its ideal level, making acidity prevail.

In short, the equation “acidity = freshness” that applies to white wines, does not work in the case of red wines because it leads to wines that are unbalanced from a sensorial point of view, which can acquire pleasantness only with aging, if they possess all the other characteristics to last over time.

So, what to do with red wine?

Marketing research.

The first thing to do should be to conduct consumer research to understand the reasons for not consuming red wine. Having a clear and objective picture of the situation is obviously necessary to deal with it successfully.

Even more so in the wine sector, where wineries act too often based on impressions and preconceptions, so strong that they feed on themselves. In writing this article I found two different American research institutes that sold a report on the global red wine market scenario, predicting growth with a CAGR from 2024 to 2032 that ranged from 5% to 7.5%.

I repeat it: it is essential to acquire primary knowledge of what consumers are thinking and doing because analyses based on secondary data collected by operators in the business risk being heavily biased.

Awareness that (red) wine consumption is not monolithic, but segmented.

The red wine market is segmented by motivations, situations and moments of consumption. Thinking that the drop in consumption is due to the lack of proposals for “fresh” red wines is making a blind bet (see above).

The sales data for the different types of wine on the main markets do not show significant growth in “fresh” wines to the detriment of fuller-bodied ones.

In fact, the data for the US market collected by Sipsource for the first 9 months show a 3% increase in value sales of Italian luxury red wines, against a -7% in red wine sales for the market in general (-17% for France). These are Brunello di Montalcino, Barolo, Bolgheri, Chianti Classico and Barbaresco. Not exactly wines you will call “fresh”

And what to say about the growth in sales of red wines aged in bourbon barrels in the USA or of wines with a certain degree of withering in Northern Europe and Scandinavia?

In other words, there is no evidence of a replacement of warmer types of red wine with “fresher” ones, but rather a net reduction in red wine consumption.

Observing the market data, it therefore appears even more risky to focus on the production of red wines with a “fresher” organoleptic profile, reducing the attention on the segments that consume full-bodied, rounded wines.

The industry is reasoning as if “fresh” red wines can solve the red wine crisis, but what if these, instead of the solution, were the problem? What if the decline in red wine consumption was due precisely to the fact that people stopped drinking these types of wine once the traditional reasons for consumption were exhausted? Perhaps the current styles satisfy the preferences of (current and potential) red wine consumers, simply the market constituted by these consumers is smaller than it was thirty years ago.

The market lacks “lighter” wines, which is different from “fresh” ones.

With all the perplexities and doubts expressed in the previous paragraphs, personally if I had to develop a new proposal in the red wine market today, I would focus on a light wine, with a profile based on few, clear, primary aromas, balanced and round in the sense of not having  “sharp edges”.

Ideally sparkling or semi-spakling to be both in line with global preferences on drinks in general and to be able to dose the residual sugar more easily in order to balance acidity and astringency,

Because I am convinced that for a consumer with a palate that is not “educated” (by habit or passion) in red wines, going from “good acidity” to “too much acidity” it’s a blink of an eye.

Acknowledgement.

I want to thank my friend and former colleague Loris for sharing with me his winemaking wisdom. Without his contribution I would not have been able to clarify the vague ideas I had regarding the paragraph on the concept of wine freshness.

The entire content of this article remains my exclusive competence and responsibility.

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