The country’s industry association said Austrian wine exports are declining in value and quantity in 2024 due to “hard market conditions around the world”.
The country’s total export value fell 6% to 233.3 million euros ($252.4 million), while exports fell 1.7% to 64.2 million litres, according to Austrian statistics cited by the industry group.
Chris Yorke, CEO of the Austrian Wine Marketing Council (Austrian Wine), said in a statement: “At present, all countries with wine face significant challenges: sharp rise in costs, reducing changes in purchasing tendencies and consumer drinking habits around the world, to name just a few.
“Most importantly, the current global economic situation is extremely turbulent, so it is difficult to propose a long-term sales strategy.”
In a January report, Austria’s Wine Marketing Commission (ÖWM) predicts that Austria’s wine exports in 2024 will decline from record levels reached in 2023.
Austria’s wine exports have grown by 62.7% or nearly 90 million euros since the last decline in 2015, experiencing their first decline in eight years, the report said.
Austria’s bottled wine exports generally fell, with volume down 5.1% and value down 6.3%.
Bottled red wine was “specially affected”, with a 12.5% drop in volume and a 14.4% drop in value.
In contrast, bulk wine exports increased by 16.1%, but lower prices led to a 1.4% drop in overall wine export value.
Germany remains Austria’s largest export market, accounting for 60.2% of total wine exports and 42.3% of export value.
However, while still above 94.5 million euros in 2022, export value to Germany fell by 13.6% to 98.8 million euros. Export volumes fell by 4.4%.
York added: “In 2023, our wine exports reached a quarter of the width of the hair, reaching a quarter of the billion euros.
“The main driver of this is the extremely high export of bottled wines to Germany’s main export markets. As the higher wines were sold to Germany again last year, we quickly realized that we would not be able to match the unusually high export value achieved in 2023. The overall global economic situation is too volatile, which is volatile in this goal.”
Switzerland, formerly Austria’s second largest export market, saw a “painful loss” with export volumes falling by 33.1% and a 18.2% drop in value.
The overall decline in Swiss wine imports, especially red wine, contributed to these figures.
