The state of (fine) wine, 2026

By day I work as a strategy consultant, helping companies make sense of data and turn it into decisions. By night (and most weekends) I run Amsterdam Vintage Wine, sourcing old bottles from private cellars and auction houses across Europe. Sometimes these worlds collide. This is one of those times.

I wanted to understand what is actually happening in the wine market right now. Do consumers drink less (fine) wine and if so, why? Additionally, I wanted to look ahead and deep dive into where (fine) wine goes from here. In this blog, I have tried to dissect all this into six different insights, all backed by publicly available data.

01The world drank less wine in 2024 than in any year since 1961

Global wine consumption fell 3.3% in 2024 to 214 million hectolitres. The last time the world drank this little wine, the 1961 spring frosts had just wiped out vineyards across southern Europe.

The decline has been running for more than two decades, and the countries driving it are the ones that built the modern wine industry. France dropped from roughly 58 litres per capita in 2000 to around 35 in 2024. Italy and Spain followed similar paths. According to the Economist, the US, the world's largest wine market by volume, fell 5.8% last year to 33.3 million hectolitres. China's consumption collapsed 19.3%, continuing a slide that has averaged a loss of 2 million hectolitres every year since 2018.

The easy explanation is health consciousness. Generation Z tracks sleep rather than spending nights at the pub, or so the cliché goes. But the data tells a more interesting story. Richard Halstead, who studies drinking habits, has found little evidence that young people have given up alcohol altogether. They drink differently — seeking out quality and novelty, whether that's sake, natural wine, or craft beer. And they are far less likely than older generations to sit down for the kind of drawn-out, communal meals where wine once flowed freely.

This matters because wine, more than any other drink, is tied to eating together. Surveys in Britain and America consistently show it is the top choice for dinner with friends, especially among women. Beer dominates barbecues and big gatherings; spirits drive cocktail bars. Wine belongs to the table. And the table, increasingly, is empty. The share of single-person households worldwide is expected to rise from 28% in 2018 to 35% by 2050. In America, nearly a quarter of adults now eat every meal alone on a given day, up from 17% two decades ago.

So wine's decline is not just about people choosing to drink less. It is about people eating together less. And when they do drink, they reach for something other than a bottle that was designed to be shared.

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02But each bottle traded is worth more

If people are drinking less wine across the board, you might expect the market to be in trouble. However, according to Statista, a market research firm, the global wine market is valued at €320B, up 1.5% from last year.

When comparing both consumption and real trade value, you notice a clear separation between the two. Real trade value has grown over 60% since 2000 whereas consumption barely moved over that same period and is now actively shrinking. This indicates that even though consumers drink less, the bottles that they do drink are becoming more expensive.

Data from IWSR, a drinks research firm, makes the picture sharper. Wine volume declined across all price tiers between 2023 and 2024. Value wine fell hardest, down roughly 6%. Standard dropped about 4%. Even premium and super-premium wines dipped slightly. But looking ahead, the trajectories diverge: IWSR forecasts that value and standard wine will keep declining through 2029, while premium wine holds steady and super-premium grows by around 2% annually.

The market is splitting in two. If you sell cheap wine by the pallet, your world is contracting. If you sell interesting wine by the bottle, your market is either holding or slowly growing. The value is concentrating at the top — fewer bottles, but each one worth more.

This is partly generational. The drinkers who remain are not the ones reaching for the cheapest bottle on the shelf. They are people who care about what they drink, who read about producers, who treat a bottle of wine the way an earlier generation might have treated a restaurant reservation — as an occasion, not a habit. And occasions, by definition, call for something better.

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03Fine wine prices nearly doubled during the pandemic, then gave it all back

The broader wine market shifted gradually. Fine wine, by contrast, went through a sharp boom and bust in about four years.

Between 2020 and mid-2022, secondary market prices for fine wine (tracked by the Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000) nearly doubled. Low interest rates, pandemic-era wealth effects, and a surge in collector demand pushed prices to record highs. Burgundy led the charge, followed by Champagne and select Bordeaux vintages. For a brief window, wine felt like crypto with better provenance.

Then, from mid-2022, the rally reversed. Interest rates rose, buyers got cautious, and prices corrected by roughly 29% from peak to trough. The index returned to approximately where it stood before the pandemic started.

This reverse however, was only temporary. Trading activity on Liv-ex actually grew 7.9% in 2024. People were still buying and selling fine wine — just at lower prices. The speculative heat of 2021–2022 burned off, and the market underneath kept working.

By late 2025, the first signs of stabilization showed up. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 posted three consecutive months of positive growth from September to November — the first sustained uptick since the correction began. Nobody can say whether this is the bottom or a bounce, but the direction has shifted.

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04The correction hit regions unevenly

Every fine wine region corrected, but the scale varied enormously. Where the pain landed says a lot about how the market is structured.

Bordeaux took the hardest hit. The Bordeaux 500 sub-index fell roughly 15% on both 2-year and 5-year timeframes. Bordeaux's problem is partly one of supply: it produces more wine than any other premium region, and the en primeur system can dump new vintages onto the market at exactly the wrong time. The 2024 campaign saw weak demand. In December 2024, the European Union reached a preliminary agreement to use EU funds to uproot grapevines to reduce the wine glut — a measure aimed squarely at regions like Bordeaux that are drowning in stock they cannot sell.

Rhone followed a similar path, down about 15% over five years. Port and the older Bordeaux icons (tracked by the Legends 40 sub-index) also landed in negative territory on both timeframes.

Italy was the standout. Prices declined only about 6% over two years while staying positive over five. High-scoring releases from Tuscany and growing demand for Barolo and Barbaresco kept Italian wine steady through the downturn. Italy climbed from 13 to 22 spots in the 2024 Liv-ex Power 100.

Champagne held up well on a 5-year basis despite short-term weakness. The Champagne 50 sub-index had nearly doubled during the boom, so the correction was steep in absolute terms. But Champagne was the first region to show signs of bottoming out, with Dom Pérignon's index stabilizing as early as November 2024.

Burgundy sits in the middle: still positive over five years, but only just, and with a steep short-term correction. The rarity of top Burgundy gives it lasting collector appeal, but prices had run up far enough that a reset was probably overdue.

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05Where we go from here

The decline appears to be slowing. Fine wine prices grew for three consecutive months in late 2025, the first sustained uptick since 2022.

Three things worth watching:

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06What this means if you buy wine

Wine's problems are not evenly distributed. The market for cheap, everyday wine is shrinking and will keep shrinking. The market for wine that is worth talking about — made by interesting people in interesting places, with something to say — is more resilient than the headlines suggest. Fewer people are drinking wine, but the ones who are care more about it than ever.

If you collect fine wine or simply buy good bottles to drink, first-growth Bordeaux, prestige Champagne, and top Burgundy are at their lowest prices in years. Wines that were out of reach in 2022 are accessible again.

That does not mean everything is cheap. Bordeaux still faces oversupply pressure and weak en primeur demand. Some regions have not finished correcting. And tariff risk adds genuine uncertainty to importing into the US.

But the broad picture is straightforward: the wine market is reorganizing around quality over volume. If you have patience and you like drinking well, this is a better moment to be buying than the peak of 2022 ever was. The table may be smaller, but the bottles on it are getting more interesting.

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Data sourced from the Annual Database of Global Wine Markets (Anderson & Pinilla, University of Adelaide, 1835–2024), the Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000 index and sub-indices, and IWSR. Trade values deflated using US CPI, base year 2000. All charts by Amsterdam Vintage Wine.