Navigating a path forward amid the headwinds
Welcome to the Ciatti Global Market Report on Substack – a new home, but with the same incisive and actionable market intelligence as before. The latest pricing tables, collectively now called the Global Pricing Grid, will be published separately in a few days.
The bulk market was quiet globally through July into early August, as is typical when the Northern Hemisphere is on its summer holidays and/or preparing for harvest. However, the quietness exceeded normal levels in some countries, and speaks to a feeling – borne out by some export statistics – that 2025 has seen an intensification of the sluggishness that has characterised the bulk market since the end of the pandemic’s retail demand spike.
The same period last year was also slow, but August 2024’s Global Market Report was able to state: “Shorter crops and the return of China as a buyer in Australia have helped make the landscape appear a little more active”. For the first six months of 2024, “some exporters have experienced a better year”. In some ways, then, 2025 has been a backward step, having more in common with 2023, a memorably slow 12 months as retailers worked through inventories and commitments accumulated during the pandemic.
Chile is a microcosm of this: for the first six months of 2024, its total wine exports were up 14% versus the easy comparable of January-June 2023, when they were down a not inconsiderable 25%. In the first six months of 2025, however, exports had returned to negative territory – down 5.29% – unwinding some of last year’s recovery. International buyers in all bulk markets have scaled-back their demands in response to declining wine sales at European and North American retail and the rationalisation of SKUs, even if some individual retailers are doing a good job of selling the wines they do stock.
A recently-published survey from Wine Opinions in the US found that, among the 21-39-year-old wine drinkers it surveyed who said they were drinking less frequently than 1-2 years ago, 47% cited rising prices as a cause. It would not be a surprise if the same survey carried out in Europe drew similar conclusions: wine is less competitive on a price-per-alcohol-unit level than beer and spirits at a time when consumers are still dealing with post-pandemic inflationary pressures on their grocery bills.
The Wine Opinions survey also found wine was losing more market share to RTDs than beer and spirits are – “as wine drinkers are disproportionately RTD drinkers”. More innovation in how wine is positioned and packaged could help combat RTDs, such as canned wine, canned wine spritzers, lighter wines (going well below 10% ABV) and – conversely – higher-alcohol wine-based products. The bulk market currently has the inventory – if there are entrepreneurs out there wishing to harness it – for a lot of experimentation.
Meanwhile, the Northern Hemisphere harvests are just getting underway and this month’s report relays the latest on conditions, timing and crop-size expectations in the vineyards of California, France, Spain and Italy.
Read the full Ciatti Global Market Report for August. The Global Pricing Grid, with all the pricing tables, will arrive into your email inbox in the next few days.