Rose smashing wine sales
Rose-drinking millennials are warping the traditional wine market. They have made the trendy pink wine the fastest growing wine segment in the country, and they are buying it heavily right through winter, destroying the idea it is only an Instagram-friendly summer tipple. Foodstuffs, which covers Pak ‘n Save and New World, says rose sales have soared a whopping 150 per cent since 2014. Last year alone they rose 60 per cent.
Head of external relations Antoinette Laird says while rose sales do flatten a little in winter the overall sales in North and South Islands are growing by 54 per cent annually.
Just to show how significant that is, the second fastest growing wine is syrah/shiraz and that is rising at 14.3 per cent in the North Island. Laird says rose is now close behind chardonnay in overall turnover in North Island New World stores.
Countdown liquor merchandise manager Tim Carroll says last summer 70 per cent more rose was sold compared to the previous year. Carroll says Auckland is the hot spot for rose sales, though sales are soaring across the country. ‘‘In some of our stores, we have doubled our rose range, Some stores now have more than 50 to choose from.’’
Carroll says rose attracts red and white drinkers and can be sweet to dry, which might help explain some of its popularity.
‘‘While it is targeted more towards females, lots of men are also loving rose. What is interesting is that lots of traditional sauvignon blanc drinkers are moving over to rose.’’
The top-selling Countdown rose is The Ned. Cuisine gave it four stars in its recent rose tasting, which had a record number of entries. The judges described it as: ‘‘Salmon pink with immediately seductive floral and red cherry scents, this wine has plenty of what is too often missing in Kiwi rose – energy.‘‘
Despite all this, New Zealand is still only catching up to the rose boom that has swept the world.
A survey of rose consumption in 2015 by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine indicates of the total still wine drunk in New Zealand, men drank 6 per cent of rose and women 8 per cent. This compares to Australia where it is 11 per cent each; France with 23 per cent and 25 respectively; United States with 17 per cent and 17 per cent.
Millennials dominate Kiwi rose drinking, according to the report. Seventeen per cent of the still wine drunk by under-24s is rose. At 25-35 years it is about 11 per cent and at 35-44 years it drops to 6 per cent.
Jim Harre chairs the New World Wine Awards judging panel and judges overseas. He’s seen a great increase in the demand for high quality rose in the UK and Europe, and says we are now seeing it here and producers are ramping up production. ‘‘Most wines are focused on varietals, but rose is the only wine available in New Zealand that is not varietalspecific. Instead, it is style specific, as a combination of varietals can be used in creating it.’’