Michael Fridjhon: SA wine has the infrastructure. Where are the sales?

Even before that editorial appeared, the state of our wine industry had been on my mind. However, unlike Christian, I wasn’t nearly as concerned about its performance. For a start, while the decline (7.7% in 2025) in domestic sales definitely reflects the cutback in consumer spending, the home market is not in free fall. The figures look bad in the face of the international average – which is only 2.7% – but it’s also not out of line with many important markets. Wine consumption fell by 9.4% in Italy, 4% in the USA, 4.2% in Germany, 2.5% in Britain and 12.7% in the Netherlands.

Economies with a more substantial middle-class component – so therefore less exposed to the effect of tough times on discretionary spending – held up better. The UK, USA and Germany saw a combined volume decline of under 4%. China lost 13%, Argentina dropped 18% and Spain 8.1%.

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