Wine Industry & Marketing Blog

There's nothing new about wine in a box; in fact, boxed wine has been around for more than 30 years now but it's overall popularity remains relatively low. People remain at least a little suspicious about the quality of boxed wine and given how poor the early boxed wines could be, that's hardly surprising. Nevertheless, quality has improved, selection has improved, and the value of boxed wine is generally high.

Added to this is the fact that boxed wine is also very environmentally friendly. That hasn't always been a consideration, but more and more people are becoming more and more concerned with the environmental impact of their actions, their choices, and their purchases. Boxed wine is one way people are choosing to have a less damaging impact on the environment when drinking wine.

Click for More: Green Boxed Wines

A few days ago I wrote about how the world economic problems might impact wine consumption, but now there are some hard facts about wine consumption during 2008: overall there was a world-wide decline in wine consumption, but the decline wasn't equal everywhere. Some areas declined more while other areas were relatively stable.

Read more: Shifts, Decline in World Wine Consumption

If you thought that wine was more of a man's world, then you were very, very wrong — at least when it comes to the purchase and consumption of wine. Institutions and companies in the wine industry might still be dominated by men like so many other parts of society, but they won't be able to ignore or dismiss the evidence that wine consumers — the people who keep wine makers in business — are more female than male.

According to a new study, eight out of every ten bottles of wine are purchased by women. These women aren't buying wine based on what is "trendy" or "fashionable" and they aren't simply following whatever lead might be set by men. Instead, women are confidently buying wine based on their own judgement of what tastes good. This study is based on a survey of more than four thousand women in France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and America.

Read more: Cherchez La Femme? Women & Wine

What will happen to wine sales and wine drinking during a bad economy? Will economic recession cause a reduction in wine sales and wine drinking, or will the tough times cause people to turn to drinking wine — and alcohol of all of types — in ever greater amounts? Both seem plausible and in fact both appear to be happening at the same time: people are drinking more, but they are changing what they drink to accommodate their economic circumstances.

Read more: Drinking, Selling Wine in a Recession