Short briefing why the Germans are so important for the wine world (as well as import and export too) despite that average bottle price is low.

Not only is the worlds sparkling wine focusing on German customer behaviour as Germans drink of the bubbly stuff so much, but still wine too is an important matter of fact.

Germany is in the top ten of exporting (2,7 million hl in 2004) countries of still wine yet under the category of imports Germany ranks on the first position. The above mentioned thesis, that Germans are price sensitive might be true, yet I have to point out that the value on imported wine (0,75l bottling only) is far bigger then on local products. On the other side however the average price of a bottle wine is 3,12 € (EUR) in general while the average price of a German wine is slightly higher 3,44 €. One can only reckon that the most important country on the import market for Germany is Italy, which has the lowest average price point just 3 € specially the Italian whites are pushing the price point down, while reds are much closer to the German red wines average price.

But back to the bigger picture. Germany remains a vital place for wines, highlighting the situation on imported wines Germany as mentioned above ranks first. Distant second is the United Kingdom (UK) which does not have such a significant domestic wine production, compared to the Germany.

Let´s look at the column below for a second.

Wine import in Germany is increasing over the last 4 years and remains positive. As earlier mentioned Italy is the most important import market for Germany yet others have their fair share too. As this column shows it below.

Without getting in any comparing, Germany is a vital player for the international wine world.

Particularly foreign red wines work well on the German shelves. This is easy to explain as despite more and more red wines from Germany are coming through (and the average price point on German reds is increasing) the share of imported red wine is 63:39 for the imported (consumer buying trend 63%) while for the whites 50:29 for domestic products (consumer buying trend 50%), off trade only.

Just looking at the still wine market and from an exporter point of view (that’s how foreign wines come into play) you could say the German market is far too price sensitive and discount supermarkets have by far the biggest share (Aldi 27% while others e.g. Lidl, Edeka, etc. 30%) and they will ultimately push prices down, down and down. This is probably right, there is little to argue with this, yet measuring the weight with almost 20 million hl of wine consumption overall (ranking 4th in 2004 trend increasing according to IWSR now 23,63 million hl) and per capita consumption of 24 l (forecast according to IWSR also increasing for 2008). I very much hope so this is a bullish trend. The way, people tend to think Germany is a nation of beer drinker, and certainly they have a sophisticated beer culture (Reinheitsgebot = purity ) but Germany was always a wine producing, wine drinking and wine loving nation and will remain so in the future as well. Since 2001 they spend more on wine (in % numbers!) as on beer and wine far out weighted spirits or other alcoholic drinks. Or let´s just look at the domestic quality increase, single vineyards with meaning, fantastic wines with low yields, turning away from the “sugar water” and great appreciation from the customers. But this should be another story… the Germans like to have a good deal but they´re everything but cheap wine lovers.

Sources, Bibliography
All mentioned figures, statistics are lifted from the source(s) below.
Deutsches Weininstitut (German Wine Institution)
Vinexpo, The IWSR – The Global Wine Handbook

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