How To Stay Informed on Wine Trends in 2024

It's the big picture you need to watch and there are ways to keep informed.

It’s much easier to watch carefully to see if the pesky mouse falls prey to a single trap, than it is to survey the entire home and its surrounding environment to determine what drives the mice into the house. The macro is more difficult to monitor than the micro. But seen from a holistic perspective, that mouse trap is a very specific response to a very general set of conditions that drove the mouse into the house.

Moving into the arbitrary 12-month period we will call “2024”, it behooves everyone working in the wine industry to try and keep a watch on and monitor the general conditions impacting the industry to better prepare to take specific actions; to determine which kind of traps to lay and where to lay them. There are indicators that can help us better understand the health of the wine industry, the future structure of the industry, and the larger influences working upon the industry.

These are the macro indicators that you should be watching in 2024 to better understand what type of traps to lay going forward.

INFLATION RATES
Nothing so disrupted the average life in America than the rise in inflation that we saw begin to take hold in late 2021 and continue to rise in 2022 and into 2023 and then finally begin to wane last year. Everything seemed to succumb to the increased prices from fuel to food to services and, yes, to wine. The degree to which wine prices increase due to increased costs will help determine which price categories of wines perform better in 2024. Inflation in wine prices will determine if folks trade down or up in their purchases. You want to keep an eye on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as the most commonly used measure of inflation. Inflation and pricing is a very complicated subject. In the end, keep an eye on the direction of costs.

INTEREST RATES
The cost of doing business, the cost of owning a home, and the cost of buying a car have all gone up with the precipitous rise in interest rates that the Federal Reserve has effectuated in its attempt to bring down inflation. If interest can be brought down without causing inflation to rise or to stop its downward turn, then the economy gets a nice jolt and with it wine sales, as well as investment within the wine industry. Tracking moves by the Federal Reserve is pretty easy. Just open the nearest news site. But you can keep a watch yourself.

WINE SALES
Here you are looking for specifics and trends in wine sales. Are sales up month over month? What about the 12-month change? How are different price categories of wine performing? These and similar measures of the wine market in the U.S. are really critical for anyone working in the industry to follow on a regular basis and there are a variety of ways to do so. Wine Business Monthly will often report on wine sales taking data from a variety of sources. The Wine Analytics Report from WineBusiness is a subscription-based report ($495 per year) that provides a comprehensive look at the marketplace. Industry economist Chris Bitter provides regular reports on the health and trends in wine sales at Terrain (American Ag Credit). BW166, a wine industry data firm offers monthly reports on the sales trends in the wine industry for a subscription fee based on the size of the company subscribing ($150-$600 per month).

DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER WINE SHIPMENTS
Monitoring direct-to-consumer wine shipments provides an important insight into the health of an important slice of the wine marketplace that the majority of wineries in the U.S. engage in and depend upon. The annual report created by SOVOS/Wines & Vines is the standard for understanding this slice of the marketplace, while Wine Business Monthly generally reports topline numbers of winery DTC shipments on a monthly basis.

WINE RELATED LEGISLATION
The number of bills that are filed at the state level annually that impact the wine industry is significant and they are difficult to track. If most bills impacting wine were passed in Congress, the tracking of the bills would be simpler. But that’s not the case. So, if you want to monitor how states are changing their laws with regard to wine sales and distribution, you need to monitor upwards of 50 states. Several subscription services allow you to track legislation introduced and the bills’ progressions through the legislative process. I use BillTrack50. It costs about $600 or so per year and does a good job of sending me daily updates of bills in every state that have been identified as of interest to me based on a search criteria I set up. Legiscan is a free service, that also allows for tracking of specific bills but is far less customizable.

LAWSUITS AND THE COURTS
There are currently 12 different lawsuits working their way through federal courts that challenge the way wine and other types of alcohol are sold distributed and shipped. Each is important in its own right and each has the potential to lead to significant changes in the structure of the alcohol beverage distribution system. Tracking these cases and being aware of newly filed cases (and there will be more in 2024) is relatively difficult. Moreover, few media outlets (besides the one you are now reading) attempt to track and report on them. But anyone watching trends in the wine industry should be tracking these lawsuits because their outcome can significantly impact the industry. There are certain media outlets you should be watching closely to monitor legal changes to the wine landscape: WineBusiness.com, Wine-Searcher News, the Irish Liquor Lawyer Blog, and the Alcohol Law Review.

GENERAL WINE TRADE NEWS
I probably spend at least an hour a day doing nothing but scanning wine and alcohol-related trade news. It doesn’t need to take that long. It can be done in 15 minutes and the effort is well worth it. It will keep you as informed as you need to be on the trends and moves in the wine industry that may impact you and your future if you are in the industry. Also, by scanning the trade headlines every day, you get pretty good at discerning trends. Three different news aggregation services can help you do this. Wine Industry Insight, WineBusiness’ Daily News, and Wine Industry Advisor’s Afternoon Brief. All three send out daily emails filled with the latest news and links.