Wines of Greece in Australia

As I wrote last year here, I am a firm believer that Greek wine has a huge potential in the Aussie market due to its non-mainstream character (low production 2.5 MHL in 2015 and huge diversity of native varieties). But Greek wine needs to be sold and explained mainly in premium selling points. Markets are of course diverse; Sydney and Melbourne being eclectic and with a strong Greek community while Adelaide and Brisbane are focusing perhaps more on international varieties (another strong advantage of the Greek wine industry, especially the Syrah range).  

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 2016) provides some interesting insight to get a grip of the market. First, wine's share has increased over the previous 50 years from 12% to 38% with Australians consuming now more white wine than red (270 ML vs 190 ML). Domestic sales though are on a downward for at least 5 years as imports are getting a growing share of the market. 

Some facts:

• The volume of Australian wine imports continued to grow during the year up to October 2015, increasing by 3.9% to 89.8 ML. White wine remained the most popular import, but it now makes up a significantly smaller share of all wine coming into country (down from 69% in 2011 to 43% in 2015).

• Red wine imports increased by 8.5% to 16.6 ML, but the driving force behind the overall growth in imports being surging demand for overseas sparkling wines. Imports of sparkling wine and other wines increased by 13.5% and 19.5% respectively. This boosted the increase in sparkling wines over the past years to 40%.

• In terms of value, total imports increased 6.3% to A$693.2 million during the year up to June 2015, according to ABS data. In general export markets account for 60% of Australian wine sales. This was the fourth consecutive year of strong growth in import value, which has risen by 42% from A$487.1 million in 2011. The average value of imports per liter decreased significantly from A$7.93 in 2014 to A$7.61 in 2015.

• Consumption of wine in Australia continues to decline on a per capita basis estimated at 28.73 L/person in 2013-14, down 1.3% from 29.12 L/person in 2012-13. Consumption has now fallen by 5.7% since the 2009-10 record of 30.48 L/person.

When it comes to Greek wine, national statistics show some first signs of optimism but more time and work will be needed to reach the right conclusions. As shown in the chart below (unfortunately in Greek only but should be easy to understand) exports in terms of value have increased by almost 27% from 2014 to 2016 and the respective average price by 23.2% to 3.97 euros/lt.

Well, statistics aside, with some excellent bottles of Greek wine in our bags we are now ready to visit again our Aussie friends and share the knowledge about Greek Wine!