The wine industry has spent much of the past five years debating whether the post-Covid trend of shrinking wine volumes across major consumption markets for wine (beyond those traditional Continental European markets where wine has been in steady retreat for decades) is a cyclical downturn or a structural decline. Similar conversations are taking place across hospitality, retail, media and numerous other consumer-facing sectors as they too face flat or declining sales. When c

Wine has more stories than pretty much any other consumer category on the planet. Ancient vineyards, heroic winemakers and centuries of tradition. And yet, for all of this narrative richness, most wine brands remain stubbornly invisible to most consumers most of the time. So what is actually going on? The case for storytelling is older than marketing itself. Anthropologists have long argued that humans developed language not merely to share information, but to gossip, build

Amongst the trends highlighted by WGSN in their work on retail trends in Asia is solo-fication. More people living alone (not new), but now more people doing things alone: shopping, eating, treating themselves - and doing this deliberately rather than apologetically. It reminded me of a question Felicty Carter and I on our podcast A Question of Drinks: Why isn’t more wine sold in half bottles? When you look at how people are actually behaving, the friction becomes obvious.