When it comes to wine ordered directly from wineries, Oregon is hot and Pinot Grigio is not.
At Wine-Searcher we haven’t been reporting much on retail wine sales lately because the usual way to see trends is to compare to sales from the same month a year ago, and 2020 was a major outlier in the history of US wine sales.
One consequence of the pandemic was that DTC sales in 2020 also went up sharply, to record levels, because consumers’ access to stores was limited.
Volume is up 1.9 percent, but the really big news is that the value of the bottles sold is up – the average bottle price grew 10.1 percent to $38.50.
But California is still the epicenter of DTC wines, accounting for 77.2 percent of all bottles sold over the last year.Napa Valley , and the average bottle price recovered to $66.58, which is above the 2019 average.
That said, the volume leader in DTC sales remains Sonoma County: it’s responsible for about one of every three DTC bottles of wine sold in the US.
In terms of what people are buying, the sparkling wine party has never ended, as sales of bubbly were up 30 percent by volume and 41 percent by value.
Enophile favorites Cabernet Franc were up, while Moscato and Pinot Grigio were down.
” made some strategic acquisitions to add on some DTC wineries and brands.
“One of the best investments that wineries said they made during the pandemic was making the effort to retain their staff, particularly tasting room staff, and keeping them busy with telesales and digital outreach,” Adams said.