Wine - what we buy, drink and enjoy in 2010
A quick summary of our subscriber survey
Robyn Lewis
This year we had 1700 subscribers fill in our annual survey – a great result, well done and thanks to everyone, as we realise it was pretty long!
In good Australian fashion, most of you showed true grit and finished it, which is fabulous as it will really help us deliver you what you want to see in 2010.
So, let’s take a look at who our survey respondents were – 60% male, 40% female (same as last year) – and no big surprise this, 95% give wine as your primary interest, although food is right up there too, a bit ahead of travel. Over 50% of you are Gen X or Y, and 36% are baby boomers, and the rest too shy to say.
But however old you are, most of you enjoy both red and white wine (43%), which was a change from last year when red wine was ahead considerably. Red came in second at 37%, followed by sparkling white at 29% – maybe it’s true that we turn to bubbles when the economy is down a bit? But whatever, sparkling is sure on the way up.
The vast majority of you are like me – we buy our wines on both price and quality, i.e. value for money (81%) but it’s great to know that 14% of you buy purely on quality, which will be reassuring for smaller high quality producers in these uncertain wine times.
Also reassuring for the wine industry, about half of you spend on average between A$11-20 per bottle, another 34% between $21-30, and some even more. Yes, unless you are lucky, most good wine does cost more than A$10, and it’s great to know that our subscribers recognise that, and are supporting these winemakers.
Now, how often do we drink wine? The number who drink wine each day is down a bit this year, to 31%, whether because of the GFC or other considerations. 27% of us drink wine every 2-3 days, and another 20% about once or twice a week – yes, we do enjoy our wines!
And most of you shop around for your wines, too, whether by visiting a number of wine stores, or vineyards, or even a range of wine regions to buy. We’d like to have some more wine partners on VisitVineyards.com, and this will help guide us toward whom you’d like to see most, so thank you very much for sharing that with us (your secrets are safe with us).
It’s great to know that despite all we hear about people visiting cellar door outlets and not buying, at least amongst our subscribers you’re a loyal, supportive and/or adventurous lot, and many of you buy at least some of your wines there, and also online – but also top up from your favourite retailers.
So, three cheers to you our subscribers, and to our wine industry, who are surely facing one of their toughest years in the past few decades. Remember that next time you’re tempted by an import (I’ll exempt our close cousins NZ from that!).
We’re now being urged to buy more local food, so let’s buy more local wine, too.
Thanks again to all who responded, and congratulations to the winners. We'll be following up very shortly with some great improvements and good news for you all.
Are you a vineyard, winery, restaurant other business in a wine region? Want to reach our subscribers? Then email Kerry on promotions@visitvineyards.com to find out more and book a place during the next 6 months (first come first served).
For advertising enquiries please email advertising@visitvineyards.com
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