Wine consumption has hit the skids across the Americas and Europe. Realistically, the declines will likely continue.
The numbers, at a glance, are ugly. US wineries reported revenue decline, on average, by 3.4 percent in 2024, while administrative expenses were up 5.5 percent and interest expenses were up 12 percent year over year, according to the State of the Wine Industry 2025 report from the Silicon Valley Bank Wine Division.
Cash, overall, is lower by 14 percent and credit borrowing surged at 77 percent. In France, the world wine HQ, consumption plummeted 15 percent year over year, according to the EU's most recent estimate – and an eye-popping 70 percent in the past 60 years.
The downward spiral doesn't have a single cause. Whether it's the spooky, wide-reaching PSAs issued by the World Health Organization linking alcohol consumption to 200-plus diseases and injuries, including 40 that would not exist at all sans hooch, or demographic changes that are driving new consumption patterns and an oversupply of grapes, it's clear that mature markets are drying up.
The $330 billion wine industry clearly won't just disappear, but is a long, slow retrenchment inevitable? Already, global wine production is slipping an estimated 2 percent. So what can be done?
Neatly swapping a new and growing market for a declining market is the dream, but an impossible one, considering the fact that traditions around wine have evolved over millennia in Europe, and centuries in the Americas. Relationships with wine merchants, importers, retailers and restaurateurs often take years, if not decades, to cement.
But the industry has to start somewhere, and some believe that Africa may be a great place to start.
"Bordeaux has had a presence in French-speaking Africa for a very long time," says Sylvie Cazes, proprietor of Saint-Émilion’s Château Chauvin, who entered the market herself with Chauvin in 2014. "When I started 10 years ago there were a few importers on the ground in the Ivory Coast and Cameroon. And in just 10 years the markets have progressed quite a bit as the upper middle class and middle class got bigger, and their interest in wine grew."
Sara Briot-Lesage, communications director for Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux confirms that the Ivory Coast and Cameroon are currently big markets for Bordeaux. Last year, Bordeaux sent 35,000 hectoliters (its 10th largest destination in volume and 21st in value) and 19,000 hectoliters (its 12th largest destination and 24th in value) of wine to the Ivory Coast and Cameroon, respectively.
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