The Australian domestic market is the largest market for Australian wine, accounting for four in every ten bottles of wine sold. However, until recently there has been very little information readily available about this crucial market. The recently completed Improving Market Transparency Project – carried out by Wine Australia with funding from Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry under the Improving Market Transparency in Perishable Agricultural Goods Industries program – has changed that, bringing a range of new freely available insights on the domestic market to the sector[1]. These were presented at the Wine Australia Market Update on 18 July in Adelaide. A summary of the new insights and tools as well as how to access them is provided below.
Increased accessibility of retail sales data
Australian wine businesses have access to very detailed information on export sales of Australian wine, but there is no equivalent for the domestic market. Retail sales data can be purchased by wineries but at a high cost. The lack of market insights for independent wineries was identified in the Review of regulatory options for the wine and grape sector conducted by Craig Emerson in 2025.
The Improving Market Transparency (IMT) project has made a number of incremental improvements to visibility of the domestic sales retail (off-trade) data landscape. These include negotiating an agreement with retail sales data provider Circana for some of its high-level statistics to be shared on the Domestic Sales Dashboard (see below) as well as on the Grape Price Indicators Dashboard. In addition, the Endeavour Group Insights report[2] as part of its quarterly Distilled magazine is shared on the Wine Australia website, while a closer relationship with the Endeavour Group (EG) has resulted in a recent collaboration with Wine Australia on the inaugural State of the Grapes Report, presented by EG at the recent Wine Australia Market Update. The presentation can be viewed here and the full report can be downloaded from the Wine Australia website.
Improved insights into consumer behaviour around wine consumption
Traditionally, researchers have looked at who consumes wine: the demographic profile including age, gender, income etc. The idea behind this is that certain people are more likely to drink wine (including different varieties and winestyles). However, more recently, attention has shifted to looking at the consumption occasion as the main driver of choice. In other words, consumers are no longer regarded as ‘beer drinkers’, ‘wine drinkers’ etc., but rather that their choice of alcoholic beverage is driven by the consumption occasion. The Endeavour Group, owners of Dan Murphy’s and BWS liquor retailers, use this occasion-based analysis to underpin all their marketing and consumer engagement strategies. It’s also the premise of Wine Australia’s new sector-wide marketing campaign, ‘We make a wine for that’ which demonstrates that Australian winemakers craft products tailored to suit a range of different occasions.
The market leader in terms of occasion research in Australia is Growth Scope, a subscription-based insights source that uses consumer surveys to find out the ‘Who, What, When, Where, Why and How much’ of an alcohol consumption occasion. This provides a rich source of insights into what drives beverage alcohol choices – including who people are with, what their functional and emotional needs are, as well as what they consume, how much and what they paid for it (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: The 5 W’s and 1 H of understanding occasion-driven consumer choices
Source: Growth Scope
As an outcome of the Improving Market Transparency Project, Wine Australia has a three-year subscription to the Growth Scope data platform, enabling the Market Insights team to analyse patterns of behaviour and identify trends for the sector. These will be published in regular articles and bespoke analysis and will inform the Market Development strategy and activities, while some of the key indicators are available on the Domestic Sales Dashboard (see below).
Better understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the on-premise channel
A big gap identified by the IMT project was information relating to the on-premise channel (restaurants, bars, pubs and clubs). There is no detailed sales data on the channel, but IWSR reports that the on-premise in Australia has declined from 86 million litres in 2019 to 58 million litres in 2024, with the double-whammy of a declining share in a declining market (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Wine sales share by channel in Australia over time
Source: IWSR data on the Wine Australia Domestic Sales Dashboard
The project identified the need to understand the reasons for this decline and provide insights into the future for this channel. Some information on consumers in the on-premise is available in reports published by CGA by NIQ. However, these are not freely available to wine businesses and are not specific to wine consumers. The project commissioned an original research project designed to provide insights into how wine consumption in the on-premise is changing, and what barriers and opportunities exist in the channel for wine businesses.
The final report, together with a Wine Australia synopsis of the main findings, are available to download.
A stand-alone, freely accessible online domestic sales dashboard to bring together all the data sources in one convenient place
The IMT project also delivered a new Domestic Sales Dashboard to provide a central place for the sector to access the new insights mentioned above. The new dashboard is the latest in Wine Australia’s highly regarded suite of dashboards and calculators.
The Domestic Sales Dashboard is organised into four pages:
- Overview – provides high-level statistics of the total Australian wine market from IWSR,
- Wholesale – insights into sales by Australian wineries based on Wine Australia’s Production, Sales, and Inventory Survey,
- Retail – new data from Circana (as mentioned above) on Australian wine sales in domestic retail outlets, and
- Consumers – numbers on consumer behaviour around wine consumption from Growth Scope as well as key indicators of wine sales in the Australian on-premise channel from CGA by NIQ.
The various datasets and related charts will get updated at set intervals during the year by the Market Insights team at Wine Australia.
If you would like a training session on the dashboard or would like to find out more information on any of the domestic market insights mentioned above, please book an Ask an Analyst session to speak to the Market Insights team.