Wine Drinkers Prefer Quality Competition Stiff As Consumption Falls

With wine’s popularity soaring in some countries but worldwide consumption declining, traditional and emerging wine producers are in heated competition to satisfy palates from Stockholm to Shanghai.

More than 2,000 exhibitors from 39 countries crowded into the biannual Vinexpo wine and spirits trade fair, eagerly seeking buyers and distributors. The five-day event opened last Monday in this city made famous by its rich ruby wine.

The world is drinking less - but better - wine, according to the French Center for International Trade, which tracks global consumption pat terns.

Global wine consumption has fallen steadily from 6.3 billion gallons in 1990 to 5.7 billion in 1994, the latest year for which figures are available, the group said.

“The big reason is that the French, Italians and Spanish are drinking much less wine,” said Herve Henrotte, the group’s wine and spirits director.

The average Frenchman drank 34 gallons of wine a year in 1960, compared with 14.5 gallons in 1994, according to Henrotte.

“Wine used to be a virtual food group in France; that’s not the case now,” he said. “At the same time, wine drinking is up strongly in the United States, northern Europe, Britain, Switzerland and Japan.”

Exports of Bordeaux wines, the top chateaus of which are highly prized by collectors, continue to grow - reaching a record 260 million bottles worth nearly $1 billion, said Fiona Morrison of the Bordeaux Wine Trade Council.

“There is a huge demand in the market for the 1996 vintage which is probably left over from the fire fueled in 1995,” Morrison said.

The 1995 Bordeaux were widely praised by experts after four straight years of mediocre vintages. Prices for 1995 and 1996 futures, or for wine sold before it is bottled, have set record highs.

While prices for good vintages of famous Bordeaux wines have also skyrocketed at auctions recently, the prices of lesser Bordeaux have remained stable while demand has risen, Morrison said.

California wine exports leaped from $242 million in 1995 to $327 million last year, according to the Wine Institute of California. British drinkers, for example, are drinking less German wine and more from California, Chile and South Africa, said the institute’s John McLaren.

Chile’s wine industry has realigned itself dramatically in the last four years, when exports jumped from 25 percent of total production in 1993 to almost half in 1996, said Virginia Fuenzalida of the Chilean Association of Wine Bottlers and Exporters.

South African exports have also nearly doubled, from 4.5 million cases in 1995 to 8 million last year, according to the South African Wine Export Association.

The biggest untapped market for wine is Asia, which has only discovered the Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot blends of the Bordeaux region in the last two years or so.

Wine has become the preferred drink of wealthy Asians from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

Taiwan is taking part in its first Vinexpo, exhibiting Shaohsing wine that has been made in China for 6,000 years, and a liqueur made from lichee fruit.

Underscoring Asia’s potential as the new frontier for wine, it will have its own Vinexpo next year: the First International Wine and Spirits Exhibition in Asia, to be held in Hong Kong next June.