The wine industry needs a new strategy to revitalise and grow local wine consumption and sales. Research by The Moss Group in collaboration with the Consumer Insight Agency (CIA) into Brand SA as part of the Wine Industry Strategic Exercise (Wise) has highlighted key points.

Growth in the liquor market over the past five to six years has been driven by RTDs, premium beer, premium whisky and, more recently, premium vodka.

This points to two major areas of opportunity for the wine industry: how to make wine as a category more relevant to drinkers of ready to drink beverages (RTDs), and how to take advantage of the clear premiumisation trend within the liquor market.

The wine category, while growing numbers of consumers, has not benefited from a strong increase in either volume or value.

Consumers’ options have increased over the past four to five years and, as a result, wine has effectively lost ‘share of throat’. Almost more importantly, wine has not reaped the rewards of value growth that other categories such as whisky and RTD have shown over the past four to five years. This needs to change: value and volume have to be balanced. Win the local fight before you take on the world market.