This is my third article reviewing Canadian Wine Trends that happened over 2021. My first two articles covered 1) Canadian interest in red and white varietal wines and 2) Canadian interest in wine styles, like sparkling and rosé wine. In this article, I will review our interest in Old World (e.g. Europe) vs New World (e.g. North and South America) wines. Did we get more interested in European wines? We are staying at home, saving money, so why not splurge on Bordeaux or Burgundy, for example? Or did we say, let’s keep our spending to a minimum as we don’t know what the future holds, so let’s check into more value-priced, yet still very delicious, New World wines?
Again I used Google Trends to produce graphs for our interest in Old World and New World wine areas, showing overall monthly trends and total query results by province. Google Trends does not give an absolute number. It is scaled to 100 for the largest amount and then everything scales as a percentage. Let’s see what Google Trends reveals!
Canadian Interest in Old World and New World Wines
In this graphic, I selected three Old World and three New World areas. I could have picked more to add, but I thought that three of the more popular ones for Canadians would give us a good idea of trend.
The three Old World countries I selected in the left column are France, Italy, and Spain, while the right column covers the New World countries of Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina.
Old World Wine Region Interest
In general, there is widespread interest in Old World wines across all provinces, except for Saskatchewan that only showed significant interest in Italian wines. I think all three countries showed a peak around Valentine’s Day or Easter. The graphs were quite spiky up and down for the year in general. With an uptick in queries in December. Italy and Spain had the largest peaks for December, and surprisingly a smaller peak for French wine in December, which was lower than many of the other peaks throughout the year. Overall, I would say that Italian wines held more interest for Canadians in 2021.
British Columbia showed as either #1 or #2 in queries for French, Italian, and Spanish wines in 2021, with Ontario in a #2 – #3 position. With Ontario’s larger population, I would have thought they would rank higher, but maybe they are buying more Ontario wines, or from New World regions. We will see in my New World analysis next. I was also surprised to see that Quebec did not show up in the top 5 provinces querying for French wine. As I mentioned in a previous article, it is possible Quebecers know which French wines they like and they continue to buy them, or they ask for advice from product specialists in their local liquor stores. If you have some insight, please post it below.
How do these three Old World countries compare in query volume? My next graph.
Italian wine queries, in general, were slightly higher than queries for French wine. Spanish wine was about 25% of French or Italian queries. The western provinces tended to query for French wine more and central Canada queried for Italian wines more.
New World Wine Region Interest
I was quite surprised at the low level of interest in New World wines across Canada. Maybe I didn’t pick the right countries? Australia had the most consistent higher level of interest by Canadians. The peaks were all about equally spaced throughout the year, but there were some times in June and August when the graph went flat to zero. BC, Ontario, and Alberta were the only provinces that showed a significant level of interest, with BC having the most interest in Australian wines.
New Zealand is well known for their Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc wines. These wines are quite food-friendly. In BC, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc pairs nicely with seafood. I would have expected BC to show up higher as a region interested in Sauvignon Blanc, but it comes in behind Ontario and Alberta. Also, the Maritime provinces did not show significant queries/interest in New Zealand’s wine as well. I thought it would be closer to BC. Ontario showed the greatest interest in wines from New Zealand, which in part could be because of their larger population compared to other provinces. Quebec, also having a large population, did not show any significant interest in New Zealand or Australian wines. The line graph is quite interesting with one large peak around July and then many smaller peaks, about 25% of the large peak spaced throughout the year. There are also several places where the graph was flat showing no significant interest.
The line graph for Argentina was a bit closer in style to Australia. The interest peaks were higher throughout the year, but still had some times of the year with zero, flat interest. Around May there was a medium-height plateau for Argentinean wines. Is it possible there was a marketing push in Ontario or BC at that time? I tried to search online for BC Liquor stores promotions for May 2021 but did not see anything about Argentinean wine. I also did not notice any promotion about Argentina for the LCBO for May 2021. Do any wine agents have an idea of what happened at this time of the year? The other thing that I noticed is that the interest in provinces only showed BC and Ontario. Maybe Malbec holds our interest more than it does for other provinces?
I was quite concerned when I viewed these graphs for New World wines and thought that maybe I should try one more region: California. Here is that graph.
California wines show widespread popularity across Canada! I was quite happy seeing this graph. Ontario and BC are again top provinces searching for wine, across all countries. I did not break things down finer, such as Napa, Sonoma, etc. Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon produce the most wines in California, so I would guess that these are the varietal wines that are reaching Canadians. The line graph shows the interest is about even throughout the year, although Google Trends put a dotted line with a large upward slope at the end of December which is their speculation of trend in that period. It pushed down the rest of the line graph. If you were to remove that dotted line, the rest of the graph would be double in eight. The end of August peak would be at 100, the March peak would be at 60 and the November peak would be at 60 as well.
I also compared my initial three New World countries together as one graph to compare the volumes of queries. Here is the result.
The tallest peak coming at the end of January and into early February is for Australian wine. The second highest peak is for Australian wine during the first week of April. Easter was April 4 last year, so maybe people decided to go with some Australian wine for their Easter dinner? New Zealand had two smaller peaks, one at the end of March and one at the end of April. The end of March peak could represent an interest in purchasing wine for the first week of April’s Easter holiday. Argentina’s three main peaks were at the end of July, September, and in December. Maybe bbq season in July, with September and December being cooler months when we generally want bigger red wines, like Malbec. BC and Alberta’s majority of queries were for Australian wine, while Ontario’s most queries were for Argentinean wine.
Adding in California to the line graphic was a mess, so I didn’t post it, but I can tell you overall the most queries were for California across all provinces. Quebec was shown as having only California wine listed in its bar graph, while the other provinces (BC, AB, ON) has lesser amounts of the three countries. Very interesting. Here is the bar chart to show the volume differences by province.
Concluding Remarks
It appears that Canadians in 2021 showed consistent interest in Old World wines, and that interest was spread out across the country. Interest in New World wines was spotty, showing peaks at certain times in the year, and the provinces of BC, Alberta, and Ontario showed the most interest. I did not put Candian interest in wines from BC and Ontario in this article for analysis. We are a New World winemaking country. I did generate graphs though for wines from both provinces, and I will post that in a separate article, and comment back on how it may affect this article’s observations.
Was 2021 an anomaly? Further research using Google Trends could be undertaken to check Canadian interest in these countries in 2019 before the COVID shut down.
