Richard Hemming MW

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Essential online wine stats and resources - free!

Richard Hemming

14 May 2018 for an updated version of this article, see here.

Below is a list of essential online wine resources that I came across while studying for the MW. This isn't an exhaustive collection, but it covers all the most important facts and figures. It should be useful to all wine students, as well as anyone in the trade who needs to know the latest stats.

Viti and vini reports - international

The main authority on global wine production is the International Organisation of Vine and Wine. Every year they release an overview of worldwide production and consumption trends. Here is the 2016 edition. Their statistical analysis section include loads of other data, including for previous years and in multiple languages.

The other most valuable report is Which Winegrapes Are Grown Where? which is available as a free ebook. It's a huge resource giving comprehensive detail as to which varieties are planted around the world.

Viti and vini reports - national

To get a more detailed breakdown of production data for specific countries isn't always straightforward. Some countries freely release official data (eg Germany), some require membership (eg Australia), while some don't seem to release any figures (eg Italy).

Here is a selection:

Market data

Data from companies such as Nielsen and Wine Intelligence can be very expensive. Luckily, however, there are other ways to get access to their most important statistics which are completely free.

Most of these links concern the UK market, but in many cases you can search within the website to find data for other markets.

  • The WSTA facts & figures section comes from the UK wine trade's official body, providing a useful overview of the market.
  • GAIN is the US governments Global Agricultural Information Network, which publishes detailed analyses of wine markets around the world. For example, the UK Wine Market Report 2016 report contains a wealth of really detailed information about wine consumption and production trends. You can search the GAIN website to find reports on other countries: here's the 2015 France report, for instance.

Other resources

Here are a few other resources I have found useful:

Feel free to contribute more using the comments section below!