(Manfred Klimek / Editorial team)
For several days now, WINEPARTY has been receiving datasets anonymously via a Hotmail address from the wine trade. These are sales figures from major retailers, passed on to us by a whistleblower. We are publishing these figures with all due caution. We do not know their origin with certainty and cannot verify them independently. Yet the material has a certain authenticity, deliberately conveyed by the sender: small details that make it appear coherent. That is why it deserves attention. For even if individual figures should prove inaccurate, they paint a picture that many winegrowers and retailers have long been familiar with from their own experience.
The latest submission concerns the first half of 2026. According to it, a major online retailer is said to have recorded a decline of two per cent in sparkling wine, while white wine is down eight per cent and rosé is up seven per cent – albeit from an still low level. Things become truly alarming with red wine. Down 46 per cent. The picture is even more dramatic for sweet wine, port and related categories. Down 78 per cent. At the same time, alcohol-free products are growing by 180 per cent – although from a very small base so far.
If these figures are even approximately correct, a question arises that is receiving surprisingly little attention.
Do we need to save red wine?
For years, the discussion focused primarily on the rise of alcohol-free wines. Before that, rosé had moved into the spotlight, accompanied by lighter white wines and new sparkling wines. Red wine, by contrast, was considered so self-evident that hardly anyone thought its position could one day be seriously threatened.
Was that assumption precisely the mistake?
Today, red wine demands many things that the zeitgeist brings with it less and less often. Patience. Attention. Often, a shared meal. And cooler seasons. After a long working day in this new world of work, those sitting at home at the table or meeting friends for a drink are increasingly opting for other wines. This is no longer a fashion. It is a change in lifestyle habits.
Climate change is another factor. Hot summers automatically lead many consumers to seek out cool wines. Even committed red wine drinkers are suddenly discovering Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc or Champagne anew. At the same time, a generation is growing up for whom great Bordeaux, Barolo or Rioja no longer belong to their personal wine universe as self-evidently as they did for the Boomer generation and Generation X. Burgundy still has a certain aristocratic status, a sense of the exceptional. Yet that, too, appears to be under threat.
However, the view of another category is even more depressing.
Sweet wine.
Sauternes, Tokaj, Trockenbeerenauslese, Beerenauslese and great ice wines were among Europe’s most precious wines for decades. Today, they are quietly disappearing from many wine lists. Not because their quality has declined, but because they are hardly ordered any more. Ask young sommeliers and you will often hear surprising things. Some have scarcely had truly great sweet wines in their glasses at all.
That would be a cultural loss.
For sweet wine is not a marginal phenomenon in European wine history. It belongs to its oldest and most significant chapters. Simply allowing it to disappear from cellars would be rather like eventually abandoning Mozart in classical music because streaming services happen to indicate different preferences. So perhaps the question is not at all whether red wine or sweet wine will disappear, but how we can bring them back into everyday life.
Does red wine need new serving temperatures? Different restaurant concepts? More courage to embrace lighter styles that are ready to drink earlier? And is it not time to show sweet wine once again where it belongs – not only with dessert, but with cheese, foie gras, spicy Asian cuisine or simply on its own? And why are there no sweet wines to mix in the bar world?
WINEPARTY will continue to publish data submitted anonymously – always with the proviso that we cannot conclusively verify its origin. At the same time, we invite winegrowers, retailers and sommeliers to share their experiences with us. And we ourselves are now beginning the process of verification.
For one thing already seems certain today: if this development is confirmed, we will no longer be discussing short-term market trends. We will be talking about a profound transformation of European wine culture.