PARIS, France – The global wine industry entered 2025 facing a rare confluence of interconnected challenges that pushed annual worldwide wine consumption to its lowest level in years, according to a new annual report released Tuesday by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), the sector’s leading global trade body.
The organization’s full-year analysis confirms that global wine consumption dropped 2.7% in 2025, falling to 208 million hectoliters. This latest decline extends a persistent downward trend that has cut global consumption by 14% cumulatively since 2018, marking one of the longest sustained contractions the industry has ever recorded.
OIV officials framed the downturn as the product of overlapping long-term cultural shifts and short-term economic strain that have reshaped consumer behavior across nearly every major market. “This evolution reflects the interaction between longer-term changes in consumption patterns and a more difficult economic environment in recent years,” the OIV explained in its review. In most mature, established wine markets, shifting lifestyle priorities, evolving social norms and generational turnover continue to alter how consumers approach wine purchases and consumption, the organization added.
Since 2020, the global wine sector has also been battered by an unbroken string of external shocks that have eroded consumer purchasing power and confidence. The COVID-19 pandemic, escalating geopolitical tensions, widespread global trade disruptions and persistent inflationary pressures have all combined to create an increasingly challenging operating landscape for producers and distributors, the report noted.
Nine out of the world’s 10 largest national wine markets recorded volume declines in 2025, with three major economies driving the bulk of the global drop: China, France and the United States. The U.S., which holds the title of the world’s largest single wine market, saw consumption fall 4.3% last year. OIV attributes this decline to three core factors: shrinking household purchasing power amid ongoing inflation, a broader trend of reduced alcohol intake among younger generations of American consumers, and a growing market share for alternative alcoholic beverages that have siphoned demand away from wine.
When asked about the lingering impact of tariffs introduced by former U.S. President Donald Trump on global wine trade, OIV director John Barker told AFP that it remains difficult to separate that effect from the host of other headwinds currently hitting the U.S. market.
France, Europe’s largest national wine market and one of the world’s top wine-producing nations, recorded a 3.2% drop in domestic consumption in 2025. China, meanwhile, saw one of the steepest single-year declines globally: national wine consumption fell 13% in 2025, and has plummeted 61% overall since 2020. OIV notes that wine demand in China remains uniquely sensitive to shifts in household income and price point changes, making the market particularly vulnerable to broader economic slowdowns.
Against this backdrop of falling demand, global wine production actually ticked up 0.6% in 2025 to 227 million hectoliters. However, OIV emphasizes that this small increase only represents a partial rebound from a historically low production level recorded in 2024. The 2025 output marks the third consecutive year of below-average global wine production, a trend shaped by both growing climate volatility and proactive production adjustments made by producers responding to softer demand.
Despite the run of reduced output, OIV does not expect below-average production to trigger widespread supply shortages in the near term. Instead, the organization projects that current market conditions will lead to a gradual drawdown of existing industry stockpiles rather than broad gaps in supply. For the global wine sector, the core challenge going forward remains adjusting to the new reality of weaker global consumer demand, the report concluded.