July 2025 Total US Beverage Alcohol Review

BW166 tracks the total beverage alcohol market in the US by analyzing all domestic tax-paid shipments and imports into the US to determine total volumes. We use data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to monitor overall consumer spending. We maintain monthly and annual data records going back to prohibition. This is the only method that accurately captures the whole market, unlike other services that cover only 50% to 60% of the market.
The chart below shows the rolling 12-month growth rates from July 2015 to July 2025. Before the Pandemic, growth rates varied from negative in the low single digits to positive in the mid-single digits. The pandemic disrupted supply chains, causing significant fluctuations in market trends. Tariffs are now disrupting trends, but the market is likely finding a new equilibrium. Overall trends for beverage alcohol are expected to be down in the low single digits moving forward.
Recent news reports indicate that the US and EU may be nearing a trade deal that would impose a 15% tariff on EU goods entering the US. A few reports suggest that Spirits, and possibly wine, might be excluded from these tariffs. This means that the uncertainty continues.
Much work has been done across the industry on how individual brands will address tariffs. Understanding the impact on volume sales due to price changes is challenging to calculate. The below assumes that a 15% tariff is imposed on EU wines. The wine category can be described as:
Extremely fragmented. TTB approves over 100,000 wine labels a year. Labels only need to be submitted for new products or labels that have material changes. This implies that there are likely between 300,000 and 400,000 wines available in the US at any given time.
There are no must-have brands in the Wine category. When examining the back bar in a restaurant, one will find a few brands that are commonly featured, such as Jack Daniel’s and Tito’s, among others. When one looks at the Wine List, there are no brands with distribution anywhere near that of key Spirits brands.
The key determinant of the impact of price changes is not the consumer, but rather the market. In the Off-Premise, the buyer will make decisions on continued distribution, frequency of promotions, or displays. In the On-Premise, the buyer has 1000’s of options for substitution. They can easily make decisions about alternative products to maintain a price point for the consumer while maintaining their margins.
BW166 has archived wine scan data for almost twenty years. We have examined scan data from food stores to estimate the volume impact of price changes. Food store data was used, as we have the largest archive of food store data. In addition, most food store data is sourced from actual scan data as opposed to sample store data extrapolated to a market.
Data from 2012 to present.
Reviewed price changes and volume changes for each SKU included.
Only included SKUs that sold 10,000 9L cases in the year evaluated. This resulted in a dataset of just over 4,000 individual data points.
Only table wines priced between $10.00 and $50.00 per 750ml equivalent were included.
The result is shown in the following scatter diagram. Most items have not experienced a material price change during the period. This results in a mass of data at the center of the chart.