Wine’s share of New Zealand’s alcohol market fell to 19.9% in 2026

Wine has lost market share in New Zealand's alcohol market since 2020, even as overall drinking in the country has fallen to a record low.

Figures reported this week by Hotel Magazine, based on data from Statistics New Zealand and NZ Customs, show wine accounted for 19.9% of alcohol available for consumption in the year ended June 2026. In 2020, wine's share was 23.3%. That is a decline of 3.4 percentage points, equal to a 14.6% drop relative to its 2020 share.

The decline matters because it happened inside a market that is also shrinking. Stats NZ said total alcohol available for consumption fell to 6.98 liters of pure alcohol per person in the year ended June, the lowest level on record. The level is about one-third below where it stood in 2011, according to the figures cited by the publication.

That means wine is not only operating in a smaller market. It is also taking a smaller slice of that market than it did six years ago. The data point to a clear change in the mix of what New Zealand consumers are choosing, with spirits gaining share while beer stayed almost unchanged.

Beer remained the largest category by a wide margin. It represented 59.7% of alcohol available for consumption in 2026, compared with 59.8% in 2020. The movement away from wine therefore did not come from beer taking a larger share. Instead, the shift appears to have favored spirits and other higher-strength categories.

The numbers are notable in New Zealand because the country is one of the Southern Hemisphere's best-known wine producers and wine is a large part of its beverage and export identity. Customs data cited by Hotel Magazine suggested roughly two-thirds of wine subject to excise and import duty was domestic product. That indicates most taxed wine in the local market was produced in New Zealand rather than imported.

The figures do not, however, show a direct measure of wine volume sold in bottles or liters, and they do not include average prices or sales values. The published statistic measures wine's share of total alcohol available for consumption. That makes it a useful indicator of category weight within the market, but not a full picture of winery revenues or retail demand by value.

Still, the direction is clear. A fall from 23.3% to 19.9% means wine has lost ground more quickly than the total market has contracted. If wine had simply moved in line with the wider decline in alcohol consumption, its share would have stayed closer to its 2020 level. Instead, the category gave up market position over several years.

The broader backdrop is a sustained reduction in drinking in New Zealand. The country now sits among the lower alcohol-consuming members of the OECD on the latest comparable international measures cited by the trade publication. Industry groups have pointed to changing consumer habits, moderation, and economic pressure on households and hospitality venues as forces shaping the market.

Those pressures are showing up across the alcohol trade. Hotel Magazine's report said total alcohol excise and import duty collected by the government has fallen for three straight years, even though annual indexation has raised rates over the same period. That suggests lower overall volumes are offsetting tax increases. In that environment, a loss of share becomes more significant for any category because there is less market growth available to absorb it.

For wine producers, the numbers suggest a double challenge. The domestic market is smaller than it was earlier in the decade, and consumers are allocating less of their alcohol intake to wine than they did in 2020. Because the available statistics do not break out physical wine volumes in the report cited by Hotel Magazine, they do not show how much of the change came from fewer purchases, smaller serves, or substitution toward other drinks. They do show that, by the year ended June 2026, wine occupied a meaningfully smaller position in New Zealand's alcohol mix than it did six years earlier.