Beer still king of brew, but B.C. wine sales jump 12.2%
Lena Sin
Province
Copper Chimney’s general manager Dalip Sharma says he can sell a $900 bottle of red in wine-crazed Vancouver. Photograph by : Ric Ernst, The Province
The noble grape is winning the battle for drinking palettes in British Columbia.
Growth in sales of wine in B.C. was up 12.2 per cent in 2004/2005 from the previous year, according to a new Statistics Canada survey on the sale of alcohol.
“What’s happening is you’ll find more and more people are into wine,” said Tony Stewart, a director of the B.C. Wine Authority and co-owner of Quails’ Gate Estate Winery in the Okanagan. “More people will bring a bottle of wine to a dinner party instead of other beverages and they’re way more wine knowledgeable.”
Nationally, the growth rate for wine was up by 6.5 per cent.
For the first time since statistics have been kept, wine is outselling spirits across the country.
Figures show Canadians spent $4.23 billion on wine for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2005, compared to $4.08 billion on spirits.
Beer remains the undisputed king of alcohol, racking in national sales of $8.45 billion.
Stewart attributed the renaissance of wine in part to a greater awareness of its health benefits. Recent studies show that drinking one glass of red wine a day may help protect against certain cancers and heart disease and can have a positive effect on cholesterol levels and blood pressure.
Stewart said he’s also seeing more and more baby boomers move away from cocktail hour to drinking a glass of wine over dinner.
Dalip Sharma, general manager of the Copper Chimney restaurant and bar in downtown Vancouver, said his customers are increasingly choosing wine over other drinks.
“With the publicity that red wine has received about its health benefits, people are choosing that over hard liquor,” said Sharma. “The low end of bottles — about $24, $28 — used to be the thing. But now, $45 is no problem. People readily buy $150, $250 dollar wines.”
Even his most expensive bottle of red at $900 will sell, he said.
On a per-capita basis, every Canadian aged 15 and over spent on average $161.10 on wine in 2004/2005.
Red wines accounted for 54 per cent of all sales of wines in Canada, while white wines had 32 per cent of the market.
Kevin McKinnon, manager of the Marquis Wine Cellar in Vancouver, said the rising popularity of red over white may have to do with price.
“I hate to say it, but there are more good red wines at a lower price point than whites,” he said. “I’d say around 15 years ago, you’d have two-thirds [of customers] into white, and one-third red. But it’s now about 50-50.”
While B.C.’s wineries remain a bit player in a competitive global market, sales figures have risen a dramatic 63 per cent in just three years.
Sales for B.C. Vinters Quality Alliance (VQA) wines in December 2005 topped $131 million, up from $109 million the previous year and $80 million in 2002.
© The Vancouver Province 2006
