Australian cellar door survey shines light on direct wine sale opportunities

Opportunities to increase direct-to-consumer sales (DTC) through paid tastings, food and wine pairings and enhanced wine tourism experiences are among the key findings of Wine Australia’s first cellar door and direct-to-consumer survey.

Wine Australia today released the full findings of its August 2018 survey of 180 wine companies, as part of the Australian Government’s $50 million Export and Regional Wine Support Package (the $50m Package).

The survey shows that cellar doors are the driving force behind direct-to-consumer sales in Australia, accounting for 44 per cent of DTC revenue, ahead of wine clubs and mail orders.

Overall, direct-to-consumer sales accounted for 10 per cent of all domestic wine sales for the survey’s respondents.

Wineries that produce less than 1000 cases relied on direct avenues for 68 per cent of sales and wineries in the 1000–5000 case bracket achieved 40 per cent of sales through DTC channels. In contrast, wine brands with production above 50,000 cases recorded just 4 per cent of sales through DTC channels.

Wine Australia CEO Andreas Clark said approximately two–thirds of Australian wineries produced fewer than 5,000 cases, which highlighted the importance of DTC channels to the majority of wine businesses.

‘This is really the first time we’ve benchmarked operations in this space and in future surveys we’ll be able to measure changes and provide wineries with insights to help them develop their DTC strategies.

‘The survey shows that nearly 90 per cent of respondents have a cellar door, with this channel accounting for close to half of all DTC sales on average, and significant investments are being made at cellar doors across Australia; with two-thirds found to be open 7 days a week.

'Although 86 per cent of respondents offered food, such as a restaurant or platters, only 28 per cent of cellar doors offered matched food and wine tasting experiences.

‘There’s a huge opportunity here for wineries, as food and wine tourism is a growing market, particularly if you’re looking at tourists from the China and USA markets. It’s also a key focus of our $50m Package activities.

‘High-value travellers rank good food and wine in the top five most important factors when choosing a holiday destination, according to Tourism Australia research.

‘That’s why we’ve partnered with Tourism Australia on international marketing campaigns and we’re delivering “Growing Wine Tourism” webinars in each state from 29 October 2018 with ATEC, Wine Tourism Australia and Fastrak Asian Solutions’, he said.

More information about the Growing Wine Tourism program can be found here: www.wineaustralia.com/au/growing-wine-tourism

Other findings from the cellar door and DTC survey include:

• 29 per cent of respondents charged for wine tastings, with larger wineries less likely to charge a tasting fee (US research shows paid tastings translate to more sales)
• annual visit rates were found to correlate strongly with winery production, with 1000 visitors on average per year for every 1000 cases of production, and
• 60 per cent of respondents operated a wine club and/or loyalty club and average growth in wine club memberships in 2017–18 was 14 per cent.

Background

The aim of the cellar door and direct-to-consumer survey is to provide Australian wine producers with meaningful and actionable insights data to assist in the development of wine tourism and DTC activities, and over time to develop a series of key benchmarks and statistics that can be used to monitor the adoption of DTC strategies within the Australian wine sector.

Nearly 200 wineries responded to the inaugural survey. Future surveys will aim to build the participation rate to allow comparisons to be made between wine regions and other criteria such as between wineries that have cellar doors or wine clubs and those that do not.

The full cellar door and direct-to-consumer survey 2018 report can be found at https://www.wineaustralia.com/market-insights/cellar-door-and-direct-to-consumer-survey-report.

For more information, please contact market.insights@wineaustralia.com.