World wine consumption falls to lowest level since 1957; Portugal only big market to grow

Global wine consumption fell 2.7% in 2025 to 208 million hectolitres, the lowest level since 1957, according to International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) figures cited by the Portuguese title Observador. The cumulative decline since 2018 now reaches 14%.

Nine of the world's ten largest markets contracted last year. The United States, the single biggest market, was down 4.3%. The world's vineyard area shrank for a sixth consecutive year, to seven million hectares, as growers pulled out vines that no longer had an outlet.

Substitution, not rejection

The data points to a reallocation of drinking occasions rather than a rejection of the category. According to the research firm IWSR, one in two wine consumers says they actively moderate their intake, and younger drinkers show much weaker loyalty to any single category, switching between wine, beer, spirits and no-alcohol options depending on the occasion. Price is part of the equation, since a beer costs less than a bottle, and so is health, which weighs on a 25-year-old's decision in a way it did not in 1990. Observador frames the shift as wine losing the exclusivity it once held at the table, not losing a generation.

• World consumption: 208 million hectolitres in 2025, down 2.7% and 14% below 2018
• Portugal: 5.6 million hectolitres, up 5.6%, an OIV record for the country
• Brazil: 4.4 million hectolitres, up almost 42%, now the twelfth largest market
• South African exports: 9.8 billion rand, around 490 million euros, down 4.7%

Portugal and Brazil against the trend

Portugal was the only one of the ten largest markets to grow, rising 5.6% to 5.6 million hectolitres, the highest volume the OIV has ever recorded for the country. France, Italy, the United States and Germany all fell. Portugal remains by far the heaviest consumer per head at about 62 litres a year, against close to 40 litres in France and Italy. Observador attributes part of the resilience to tourism, an intact table culture and accessible prices, and part to the commercial weight of named origins: Douro, Alentejo, Vinho Verde and grape varieties that exist nowhere else.

Brazil recorded the largest proportional increase of any market in the OIV analysis, almost 42%, and became the world's twelfth largest wine market, on course to pass China. Per capita consumption remains between two and three litres a year. With more than 200 million inhabitants, Brazil drank 4.4 million hectolitres, still less than the 5.6 million hectolitres consumed by Portugal's ten million people. Brazil is already one of the main export destinations for Portuguese wine, which makes the gap between headline growth and per capita volume the most commercially relevant figure in the report.

Two strong Brazilian harvests

Rio Grande do Sul harvested 957,000 tonnes of grapes in 2025, 36% more than the previous year, according to Brazil's official statistics institute, and national wine production rose 38%. The 2026 vintage again came in above the historical average, estimated by state agricultural services at around 905,000 tonnes, with Serra Gaucha growers describing quality as historic and sugar levels rarely seen. Both crops follow the devastating floods of 2024. The Serra Gaucha, settled from 1875 by Italian immigrants, concentrates the bulk of Brazilian wine output and supports about 15,000 families, almost all family farms, across just over 40,000 hectares of vines. Further south on the Uruguayan border, the Campanha Gaucha, a flat, sandy, mechanisable and lower-cost zone, obtained its geographical indication in 2020 and is drawing investment in fine wines.

South Africa: shrinking vineyard, pivot to value

South Africa is the world's seventh largest wine producer, ahead of Chile, Germany and Portugal, but its vineyard has contracted for ten consecutive years and 2024 output was the lowest since 2005. Domestic consumption fell. Exports dropped 4.7% in rand terms last year to 9.8 billion rand, about 490 million euros, with the bulk wine segment down more than 13%. A 30% tariff on entry to the United States cut sales to that market by 28%. The number of grape growers fell from 4,360 in 2005 to 2,693 in 2020, almost half lost in a quarter of a century. The industry response is premiumisation: exiting the cheap exported litre, where any country with a favourable exchange rate can undercut it, in favour of bottled wine with stated origin and variety, trading volume for margin.