How do consumers really feel about French Wine?

We wanted to learn a little bit more about the perception of French Wine in the UK market. To do this, back in 2014 we conducted a consumer survey, which we the repeated earlier this year (2019) to around 2,000 customers.

We asked them about their buying habits, thoughts and opinions on French Wine.

The results were very interesting and we’ve picked out some of the key highlights here:

• Most wine drinkers don’t drink French wine because they prefer wines from other countries (mostly New World) or they think French wines are too expensive.
• Of those who DO drink French wine, they buy it fairly regularly: more than once every three months and more than once a month.
• There has been a decrease in the number of people who only buy wine on discount, from 41% (2014) to 25% (2019).
• There has been a 21% increase in those who are willing to spend more (between £8 -£14), 56% now compared with 35% in 2014.
• All of these trends suggest people are now happier to spend more money on French wine than they were 5 years ago.
• In 2014, French wine drinkers mostly bought red and white wine, with their favourite region being Bordeaux, followed by Burgundy. In 2019, Bordeaux still comes out on top, only this time it was followed by Champagne.
• Respondents mostly drink supermarket brands even though the figures show no big difference. That means French drinkers might not really care about brand but rather about the origin of the wine.
• As for the previous surveys, we can see the most important criteria when buying wine are the taste and the price. These two are followed by the origin of the wine.
• We included ‘Added sugar’ and ‘Alcohol content in the 2019 survey as we feel these are hot topics. Mainly due to an increase in promotion of healthy lifestyles in the media. Alcohol content was deemed more important to people than sugar content.

In summary, it looks like there is definitely a growing appreciation for French Wine – this is demonstrated by the fact that people are willing to pay more for a bottle, whether or not it is on offer.

Because there are so many great value wines from all over the world, it is difficult for French wine to stand out against all of them as the wine of choice. However, the fact that consumers are more concerned about where in France the wine comes from rather than the label, is a strong indicator that people respect the wine regions and will continue to do so.

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