China’s industrial wine output fell 11.1% in September

China’s industrial wine production fell in September after a stronger reading in August, showing that the sector’s year-to-date improvement is still being driven by uneven monthly results.

Wine output from industrial companies covered by China’s national statistical system totaled 8,000 kiloliters in September, down 11.1% from 9,000 kiloliters in the same month of 2025, according to figures attributed to the National Bureau of Statistics of China. The data were reported by the Chinese trade publication Huaxia Jiubao and republished by Sina Finance on Wednesday.

For the first nine months of 2026, production reached 63,000 kiloliters, up 1.6% from a year earlier. That means the sector remained slightly ahead of last year on a cumulative basis even after the September decline.

The September figure points to a loss of momentum from August. Data compiled by Zhongshang Industry Research Institute, which tracks the series used for comparison, showed that August wine production had increased 20% from a year earlier, while cumulative production through the first eight months of the year was flat at 0% growth. On that basis, the September reading represented a 31.1 percentage point slowdown in the monthly growth rate, even as the year-to-date measure improved from 0% to 1.6%.

The figures suggest that China’s wine production is stabilizing only slowly and remains volatile from month to month. The stronger cumulative reading for January through September was not the result of a broad and steady monthly expansion. Instead, it came alongside a renewed drop in September output after the rise seen a month earlier.

The data cover wine production by industrial enterprises included in China’s official statistical system. They do not measure retail sales, imports, inventories, or consumer demand. A rise or fall in production in a given month does not necessarily mean that consumption moved in the same direction.

The National Bureau of Statistics is the Chinese government body responsible for national statistics and is the original source cited for the figures. In this case, the information reached the public through Huaxia Jiubao, a specialist Chinese publication focused on alcoholic beverages, and then through Sina Finance, which reproduced the report.

The published volumes are rounded to the nearest thousand kiloliters, which means absolute changes should be treated as approximate. Based on those rounded figures, September production was about 1,000 kiloliters lower than a year earlier. That aligns with the reported 11.1% annual decline, but the exact physical difference may vary slightly because of rounding in the underlying data.

Even with that limitation, the September release gives a clear picture of the latest shift in China’s wine manufacturing trend. After August posted a year-over-year gain, September returned to contraction, while the cumulative total for the first nine months of the year moved modestly into positive territory.