Prosecco sales grow by a third, with retailer own labels taking biggest share

By Jo Gilbert

Published: 18 April, 2016

Sales of Prosecco continue to outpace those of Champagne, according to new figures from retail insight leader IRI.

Prosecco sales now total £356m, a growth of 34% in the last year.

This compares with a sales increase of 1% for champagne (to £251m) and just 0.4% for the wine sector overall.

IRI's analysis is based on actual sales of products across the major supermarkets in the 52 weeks from February 28, 2015, to February 27, 2016.

As well as a steady growth in the Prosecco market, the analysis of grocery sales data shows that shoppers are buying more supermarket own-label Prosecco than any individual branded product.

Own-label Prosecco claims 12% of the total market, with the most popular brand - Plaza Centro - taking just 6%.

This indicates that sales of Prosecco are not being driven by the cachet any one brand brings, but rather the ability to buy a highly drinkable, celebratory tipple at a reasonable price.

The continued demand for Prosecco has led to a healthy sales increase in the overall sparkling wine category, which grew 15% in the last year to £905m.

The performance of the wine sector as a whole is static, with value sales growing 0.4% year on year to reach £5.9 billion.

Sales of still wine are down -1.8%.

White wine remains the UK's number one choice in the still wine category, representing 47% of total value sales.

However, its popularity is waning, with sales falling by -1.6%, compared with a drop of -1.2% for red wine.

If it continues to decline faster than red wine, white wine may lose its position as the UK's favourite in the next few years.

New world wines outperformed old world wines over the last year with Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina all growing in contrast to the decline of the wider market.

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