There is a handful of very large wine producers in the world, who together represent a quite big proportion of world wine production.
It is not always obvious who they are since they sell their wines under a variation of different brands and rarely under their own name. that is perhaps not very surprising since wine brands often try to keep up an appearance of “family estate” or “local” links, even if that is far from reality (cf. for example the note on the biggest brands in the UK recently).
But even so, wine production is far less concentrated than many other industries (say, car production) – fortunately. The worlds’ ten biggest wine producers make in total some 422 million 9 litre cases, which equals to about 15% of the world market. Here are the names (in size order):
1. Constellation Brands, with ca 90 M 9l cases
2. E & J Gallo Winery
3. The Wine Group Inc
4. Foster’s Group Ltd
5. Grands Chais de France
6. Pernod Ricard
7. Peñaflor
8. Viña Concha y Toro
9. Castel Groupe
10. Bacardi & Co
So, do you know which wines hide behind these names? Perhaps something you had last night?
(Source: Euromonitor International, Global Wine: Challenges and Opportunities Facing the Wine Industry)
