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People are drinking less alcohol in many places, and the pattern is uneven. In Health at a Glance 2025, OECD countries averaged 8.5 litres of pure alcohol per person aged 15 and over in 2023. Most of those countries consumed less than in 2013, and some consumed more. Wine faces an additional squeeze. The International Organisation of Vine and Wine found that fifteen of the twenty largest wine markets drank less in 2024 than in 2023. A separate IWSR forecast series then reported another drop in global wine volume in 2025 and projected further decline through 2035. Health and wellness, high prices, practical motives such as driving and avoiding hangovers, and longer shifts in lifestyle, social life, and demographics all show up in the evidence. Wine tourism can diversify winery income. Many surveyed estates already describe it as profitable. On this evidence, visitor sales do not automatically replace bottles that go unsold.
How much less alcohol are people drinking?
Most OECD countries consumed less pure alcohol per person in 2023 than in 2013. The average was 8.5 litres per person aged 15 and over, and some member countries consumed more. That average is a group result, current in the OECD’s 2025 health chapter, and it is the wrong tool for describing every country or every drinker.
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Agencies convert beer, wine, and spirits into pure alcohol before they publish the litre figure, and national conversion methods can differ. A small gap between neighboring countries can be a measurement gap as well as a drinking gap. The series tracks recorded sales of alcohol. It describes the background volume of counted drinks across a decade. One household’s Friday receipt is a different object, measured in bottles, glasses, and prices.
The years matter for a budget. A decline spread from 2013 to 2023 moves the baseline of recorded drinking. A one-year price jump moves this month’s spending. Wine does not inherit the OECD average automatically, because that average mixes every alcoholic category. Wine’s path comes from wine-specific sources, and those sources cover later years than 2023.
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Why is wine consumption falling on its own track?
Wine fell in most of the biggest markets in 2024. A 2026 market-research update then put global wine volume down again in 2025, with a further volume decline forecast out to 2035.
In the State of the World Vine and Wine Sector in 2024, published in April 2025, the OIV said 2024 continued the decline seen in 2023. Fifteen of the world’s twenty largest wine-consuming markets recorded lower consumption in 2024 than in 2023. The organisation tied that year to weaker demand across major markets and to high average prices. It also pointed to longer-running changes in lifestyle preferences, social habits, and generational behavior. Near-term economics and slower social change are both in that account.
IWSR, in a release dated 11 June 2026, reported that global wine volume fell 5 percent in 2025 and forecast a further 14 percent fall from 2025 to 2035. Those are market-research figures, and the 14 percent is a forecast. They are a different dataset from the OIV’s sector report. Any repeat of either percentage needs IWSR’s name, the year, and the forecast label on the 14 percent, so it is never presented as an official OIV result.
Marten Lodewijks, President and Managing Director of IWSR, set the wine numbers inside a wider drinks outlook:
The forecast stabilization in global beverage alcohol volumes is good news for the industry, but there are still plenty of challenges ahead. 2035 will be a vastly different market landscape than the one we see today, and producers will need to cater to changing consumer tastes in established markets as well as prepare for significant changes in where consumption is taking place. Companies that only rely on past successes to carry them through the next decade will face serious challenges.
The budget reading is a split basket. IWSR’s comments on total beverage alcohol describe volumes dropping further and then stabilizing. Its wine figures describe a category whose volume keeps falling through the forecast window. Beer, spirits, and wine can take different shares of the same household drinks budget. A family that still spends on alcohol may buy a different category, buy it in a different place, or buy it on fewer occasions. Lodewijks places the taste shift and the place shift on producers. Travelers meet the same shift as a change in what wine regions pour, and in what they charge people to come and taste.
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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →The European Commission’s EU agricultural outlook for 2024–2035, published in 2024, describes pressure inside the Union from health concerns, changing occasions, and demographic change. The size of the move differs by country. That document is an agricultural projection. It sits beside the OIV report and the IWSR forecast as a third lens, with the European Union as its map and 2035 as its horizon.
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What reasons do drinkers report for cutting back?
Health and wellness are the primary reasons people give for drinking less. Avoiding hangovers and being able to drive are among the practical reasons also on the record. A stated motive shows how people explain their choices. Causation for the market-wide drop in litres is a separate claim, and these surveys do not settle which force did how much of the work.
IWSR’s 24 February 2025 note on its 2024 consumer research is the source for that picture of motives. Its Bevtrac 2024 Wave 2 findings describe moderation becoming more ingrained. The behaviors it tracks are lighter consumption, temporary abstinence, occasions limited to a single drinks category, and choices with no alcohol. One household can use several of these in a single year. A smaller weeknight pour trims the regular shop. A planned month off changes one stretch of the calendar and leaves the other months to be counted separately. Sticking to one category at a celebration concentrates that night’s spending. An alcohol-free drink with dinner moves the purchase into a different product.
Generational change is one strand in the OIV’s long-run account, listed with lifestyle preferences and social habits. The sources describe a stack of drivers, and they describe different patterns by market and by cohort. Health motives, the 2024 price and demand conditions the OIV recorded, and the practical constraints IWSR’s respondents named all sit in that stack. An explanation that stops at one age group leaves the measured picture incomplete.
Richard Halstead, COO Consumer Research at IWSR, offered a time-bound reading of an earlier pullback. He was interpreting the 2024 Bevtrac findings when he said:
It’s now becoming clear that some of the withdrawal from alcohol at that time was more to do with economic worries and lingering effects of Covid and associated lockdowns.
Economic worries can shrink the drinks budget directly, because the money is committed elsewhere. Lockdowns changed the occasions on which drinks were bought. Health motives can continue after a paycheck recovers. A household can hold more than one of these reasons at the same time. None of the sources publishes a percentage split that assigns the litre decline to health, price, lockdown effects, and demographics in fixed shares.
How should you separate a price shock from a lasting habit change?
High average prices can cut litres in the near term. Health, occasions, demographics, and social habits can hold consumption down on a horizon that runs to 2035. The current sources support both clocks at once, and they call for different decisions.
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The OIV’s account of 2024 places high average prices next to weaker demand. Where price is the binding constraint, the same money buys fewer bottles, and a later price cut has a route back into volume. The European Commission groups health concerns, changing occasions, and demographic change as features of its outlook through 2035. On that horizon, one discounted vintage does little to the underlying pattern. A household that cut back because money was tight is in the episode Halstead describes. A household that cut back to avoid hangovers is in the practical motives IWSR recorded. Those are different plans. A lower shelf price speaks more directly to the first plan than to the second.
Five comparisons keep the headlines from collapsing into one story. The figures are the ones those organisations published, read as of November 2026.
| Lens | What the sources report | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Country and region | OECD average of 8.5 litres of pure alcohol per person aged 15 and over in 2023; most members lower than in 2013; some higher. OIV: 15 of the 20 largest wine markets lower in 2024 than in 2023. EU outlook: the shift differs by country. | A budget rule or a trip plan needs the country in front of you. The average describes a group of countries. |
| All alcohol and wine | The OECD covers pure alcohol from recorded sales across categories. The OIV and IWSR’s wine series cover wine. IWSR’s June 2026 comments on total beverage alcohol describe a further drop and then stabilization. Its wine path is a 5 percent volume drop in 2025 and a forecast further 14 percent decline from 2025 to 2035. | Spending on drinks and spending on wine are different lines. One can flatten while the other shrinks in volume. |
| Moderation and full abstinence | IWSR tracks lighter drinking, temporary abstinence, single-category occasions, and no-alcohol choices. Health and wellness lead the stated reasons. Hangovers and driving are also reported. | A household that still buys wine on some nights sits inside the moderation pattern the researchers describe. |
| Price now and habit over time | The OIV ties 2024 to high average prices and weaker demand, and also to longer-run lifestyle, social, and generational change. The EU outlook carries health, occasions, and demographics out to 2035. | A cheaper bottle next spring speaks to the price half of the story. Habit and health sit on the longer clock. |
| Winery visits | Global Wine Tourism Report 2025, summarized by UN Tourism: 1,310 wineries in 47 countries. Experience format, access, region, and business size all vary. | A tasting trip is a local product. The road, the staff, and the size of the estate decide whether a format fits. |
The rows use different years on purpose. The OECD comparison here ends in 2023. The OIV sector report covers 2024. IWSR’s 5 percent is a 2025 volume estimate, and its 14 percent is a forecast running from 2025 to 2035. Folding them into a single “down X percent” sentence creates a number none of the publishers issued.
What does lower wine demand mean for wine tourism?
Softer bottle demand gives wineries a reason to earn more from visitors. In a survey of 1,310 wineries across 47 countries, 65 percent called wine tourism profitable or very profitable. That finding supports diversification as a live strategy. It does not show that visitor income replaces unsold bottles at every estate.
The figure comes from the Global Wine Tourism Report 2025, produced by Hochschule Geisenheim University with partners and summarized by UN Tourism in the conclusions of the 9th UN Tourism Global Conference on Wine Tourism, issued in 2026. The summary presents wine tourism as a resilience and diversification strategy while wine consumption is declining. The same pages name the pressures sitting on that strategy: declining consumption, economic constraints, shifting preferences, accessibility, regulation, labor shortages, and climate change.
“Profitable or very profitable” is the responding winery’s description of its own visitor activity. The survey result does not measure whether that income equals the margin lost on wine that shops and restaurants stopped ordering. The sample is large and international. Wine law, distance from a major city, and the size of the business still decide whether one estate can count on visits. A cross-country share of respondents can depart from the result in any one region.
For a household, the useful distinction is whose budget the money sits in. Experience income is revenue for the winery. The same payment is a holiday cost for the guest. They match as a single transaction, and they are planned on different timelines with different substitutes. Skipping a case shipment and booking an afternoon are separate decisions. Economic pressure, which the tourism summary lists as a constraint on the businesses, can hit the guest’s trip fund and the winery’s cash flow in the same season.
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Which wine-visit formats are growing in importance?
Food pairings, meet-the-winemaker encounters, and private events are the formats the 2025 report singles out as gaining importance beyond traditional visits.
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UN Tourism’s summary of the report also lists changing visitor preferences, accessibility, sustainability, digitalization, regional differences, and economic pressure. Differences by region and by the size of the business run through the findings. Digitalization, in the report’s framing, is part of how visits are discovered and arranged. Sustainability is one of the conditions the summary says destinations now have to weigh. The summary attaches no standard ticket price to either point.
Each format is a test against the place, because the report’s spread of regions and business sizes points that way. A food pairing needs a kitchen, a margin on the plate, and guests who will stay for a meal. Time with the winemaker needs that person to be available on the days people book. A private event needs a room, enough staff, and a group large enough to cover the wage cost. Access comes before the menu. Guests who can reach an estate easily from a city produce a different Saturday from guests who face a long or seasonal journey. Labor shortages, already named as a sector pressure, decide whether the person who would host is actually on the roster. Economic pressure runs in both directions at once: households have a reason to skip a discretionary trip, and wineries have a reason to design a trip that covers its own cost.
A traveler can use the same list as a buying filter. Decide which part of the afternoon is the purchase — the glass, the meal, the conversation, or the private room — and put that part at the center of the trip budget. The report’s point is that these experiences now carry more of the visit. The published summary does not give a typical price for any of them, so the estate’s own quote is the number that belongs on the spreadsheet.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should a household budget around lower drinking?
Separate litres from money before you change a spending plan. These sources measure volume, stated motives, and wineries’ view of visitor profit. They do not publish the typical change in a household’s cash outlay.
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What you need first is one recent month of drinks spending that you can split into shop purchases, drinks bought with meals out, and any wine-travel deposits, plus the quoted price of any winery visit already on the calendar.
- Write down that month’s three totals. The OECD and OIV figures will differ from your receipt, because they count recorded pure alcohol and market wine volume across populations. They tell you whether recorded drinking in many countries is on a lower path than a decade ago. They do not audit your kitchen.
- Name the moderation behavior you are actually using. IWSR’s set is a direct checklist: lighter pours, a planned break, one category at events, or no-alcohol drinks. A planned break changes one stretch of months. Lighter pours change the regular shop. A no-alcohol substitute moves the purchase into another product, and these sources do not say whether the substitute costs less.
- If shelf prices are the constraint, volume can fall while spend stays flat or rises. That combination lines up with the OIV’s pairing of weaker 2024 demand and high average prices. IWSR’s further 14 percent wine-volume decline from 2025 to 2035 is a forecast about litres. It is not a forecast of the grocery bill in currency.
- If a wine trip is booked, price the experience itself as the core cost. Food pairings, winemaker meetings, and private events are the formats the tourism report says are gaining weight, and the report is silent on the rate card. Any case shipped home is a further purchase on top of the visit.
- Recheck plans that depend on a difficult journey or a full weekend roster. The tourism summary names accessibility and labor shortages among the pressures on wineries. Those are the conditions under which a dated visit is hardest to deliver.
- Park the 2035 figure in its own box. Use IWSR’s forecast for a decade-scale sense of wine volume and, in Lodewijks’s words, of where consumption takes place. Leave the percentage out of this year’s holiday arithmetic, where it functions only as background.
Health-led cutting and money-led cutting can look identical on a bank statement. Halstead’s remark ties part of an earlier withdrawal to economic worries and the lingering effects of Covid lockdowns, which is a period reading from IWSR’s research. A raise can reopen spending that was closed by money. A health motive can outlast the raise. The global series cannot label a personal line item. The household can.
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What goes wrong if you budget from the headlines?
The expensive mistakes are blending countries, blending years, and blending a winery’s visitor profit with a guest’s costs. Each one has a correction that stays inside the published figures.
- Using 8.5 litres as if it were your country. That OECD figure is the 2023 average for member countries, per person aged 15 and over. Most members were lower than in 2013, and some were higher. Read the national series before a group average becomes the story of your grocery shop or of the country you are about to visit.
- Repeating a 14 percent wine decline as an official result for a year that has already closed. IWSR reported a 5 percent drop in global wine volume in 2025 and forecast a further 14 percent decline from 2025 to 2035. The OIV report in this set is the 2024 sector review. The forecaster’s name and the word forecast stay attached to the 14 percent.
- Hearing that tourism is profitable and concluding that a visit is inexpensive, or that lost bottle sales have been covered. The 65 percent figure is the share of 1,310 surveyed wineries, across 47 countries, that described their own visitor activity as profitable or very profitable. Price the visit from the estate’s quote. Keep bottle demand as the separate volume problem the OIV and IWSR document.
Cohorts differ along with countries. Generational behavior and demographic change are part of the long-run account from the OIV and the European Commission, in the same picture as health, price, occasions, and social habits. IWSR adds what reducers say when they are asked, and it describes several moderation behaviors. A reader in a country where recorded consumption rose, or in a wine market outside those fifteen declines, is looking at a different local fact. The international material is a map of mechanisms to check locally: price, health, occasion, access, staffing, regulation, and climate.
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Wine tourism is a plausible way for an estate to diversify when bottle demand is softer. A majority of responding wineries already describe it as profitable or very profitable, and the formats gaining attention are food pairings, time with the winemaker, and private events. Whether that works at a given address still depends on the region, the size of the business, whether guests can get there, whether staff can host them, and whether the offer still makes sense under the economic pressure the survey summary records. Lower alcohol consumption is a reason wineries look harder at visitors. The visit still has to pay for itself on its own roads, wages, and demand, in the guest’s budget and in the winery’s.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did the 2023 jump in people quitting alcohol last?
In IWSR’s Bevtrac data, the increase in complete abstinence during 2023 looked temporary. IWSR presents that as a feature of its own dataset, describing how widespread full abstinence was in that wave of research. A spending plan that treats lifelong abstinence as the new norm for the whole population is asking that 2023 spike to carry more than the finding reported.
Are Europeans swapping red wine for sparkling and alcohol-free wine?
The European Commission’s EU agricultural outlook for 2024–2035 describes shoppers moving away from red wine toward fresher, easier-to-drink styles, and it names sparkling wine in particular. Paths differ between EU countries. The same outlook says sales of non-alcoholic wine products are increasing and remain small. Someone buying less red wine may be changing style and occasion inside wine, while alcohol-free wine stays a small slice of the market in the Commission’s account.
Do official drinking statistics include tourists and homemade alcohol?
OECD alcohol figures are annual sales of pure alcohol, and the organisation warns that tourist consumption and unrecorded alcohol are generally left unadjusted. Visitors buying wine in a holiday region can lift that region’s recorded litres. Drinks that never enter official sales can leave the statistic short of what residents actually consume. Anyone comparing countries before a wine trip is comparing sales totals with those two gaps still open.
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The international wine-tourism findings do not certify a booking company, publish a standard fee, or list the countries where any one platform sells visits. What belongs in the travel budget is the rate the winery quotes for the date, any minimum spend it requires, and the cost of getting there. A conference report can show which sorts of experiences estates are emphasizing. Choosing a website to book through is a separate check against the estate’s own offer.
Is the wine tourism profitability share a growth rate?
The profitability result is a description survey respondents gave of their present visitor activity. It contains no year-over-year growth rate and no forecast of how many guests will arrive. A personal plan that depends on how many visitors a region will draw next season needs a local arrivals series, which this conference summary does not publish.
