Wine avoiders in five countries: Potential for adopting wine as an alcoholic beverage of choice

Charles Sturt University has been conducting a study in five countries on more than 4000 'wine avoiders'; that is, people who consume alcohol but choose not to drink wine. There are varied reasons why consumers choose to avoid wine and these will be reported in detail in various forums as data is analysed further.The purpose of this article is straightforward: to report on the percentage of people who are classified as 'wine avoiders' across a spectrum of wine countries. This is important,since an avoider of wine in this context potentially represents a new customer to the wine industry, rather than a customer who has been taken from a competitor, or worse, another brand (i.e., commonly termed product cannibalisation). If the percentage of avoiders is considerable, then this represents a platform to potentially substantially increase wine sales in a sustainable way, and to expose more consumers to the joys of experiencing wine.