Chilean wine imports dominate Colombian market as consumption grows

While Colombia is traditionally a nation of beer and spirit drinkers, over the past decade, Colombia’s wine market has shown promising growth.  

Per capita consumption has increased by 3% a year since 2011, and now amounts to 0.5litres a head, according to a new report by Wine Intelligence.   This is particularly the case in urban areas where, thanks to the country’s flourishing economy, a burgeoning middle-class have higher disposable incomes to spend on luxury goods such as wine.  

Free trade agreements have helped to widen the range of wines available and have led to an increase in the number of imported wines in the Colombian market. Still light wine imports have increased by 6% year on year in the past five years (IWSR), while domestic wine volumes have decreased.  

Chilean wines dominate the market in Columbia, accounting for 60% of the still light wine imports. And the vast majority of Colombians – 90% - are aware of Chile as a wine-producing nation. In addition, Chile has the highest conversion of awareness to purchase of any wine producing country; 77% of drinkers have drunk Chilean wine within the last six months.  

Brands too play an important role in buying behaviour in Colombia, with 83% of wine drinkers saying that it was important to them to drink a wine brand they were aware of. Casillero de Diablo and Gato Negro enjoy the highest brand recognition amongst Columbian wine drinkers, at 92% and 88% respectively.  

“The wine category has huge potential to expand in Colombia,” said Wine Intelligence project manager Alexandra Scheybeler. “While this is good news for Chilean brands they should not be complacent. Drinkers aged 18 – 24 are more adventurous and drink significantly less Chilean wine than their parents’ generation. Overall almost half of Colombian wine drinkers are open to trying new and different styles. There are many opportunities to be seized.”  

However, despite its promising progress, future growth is threatened by a newly proposed law which will essentially treat wines the same as spirits and could ultimately see the price of some wines increase by 35% - making them prohibitively expensive for many Colombian consumers.