The newest numbers on the bulk wine trade tell me where the wine slump actually lives. Bulk wine, the tanker loads that become private labels and entry-level bottles, shrank more than three times as fast as the wine market as a whole in the first half of 2026. This is not a category in uniform decline. It is the commodity end of wine breaking first, and for anyone who sells bottled wine on its identity, that is a clearer and more useful signal than the headline gloom.
The figures come from a Del Rey AWM report prepared for Vinexposium ahead of the World Bulk Wine Exhibition in Amsterdam at the end of this month, as reported by Vinetur on November 5. In the first six months of 2026, bulk wine volume fell 14.5% to 14 million hectolitres and value fell 12.5% to 1.11 billion euros. Over the same period, the whole wine market slipped about 4.5% in both volume and value. Bulk is a small slice of the trade by money, about 7% of value, but more than 32% of the volume.
Spain, still the largest bulk exporter, shipped 4.7 million hectolitres, down 20.9%, worth 261 million euros. Australia and Italy held up far better, with volume down 5.1% and 2.5%. New Zealand's bulk export value fell 27.3% to 115 million euros. On the buying side, the United States cut its bulk imports by 36.4% to 86 million euros, one of the sharpest falls in the report, while France reduced its volume by 20%.
Two calculations from the report's own numbers sharpen the picture. First, price. This year's half produced 1.11 billion euros from 1.4 billion litres, about 0.79 euros a litre. Working backwards from the stated declines, last year's half was roughly 1.27 billion euros from 1.64 billion litres, or about 0.78 euros a litre. So the price per litre rose around 2%, even as volume collapsed. Buyers are not chasing cheaper tank wine. They are simply buying less of it. That matches the US retail data I wrote about on November 4, where NielsenIQ showed the average price per case up about 1.6% because cheap cases disappeared fastest.
Second, the American number. If 86 million euros is 63.6% of last year's figure, the United States bought about 135 million euros of bulk wine in the first half of 2025, so it walked away from roughly 49 million euros of tank wine in six months. That is consistent with what SipSource has been saying from inside the distribution tier: wines under $13 are the biggest drag, and wholesalers are carrying too much stock to take on more of them.
The country spread also matters. Spain's bulk wine sells at about 0.56 euros a litre (261 million euros over 470 million litres), against about 0.87 euros for Italy. The cheapest origin lost the most volume. When demand falls, the wine with nothing to say beyond its price is the first to go, because a supermarket buyer can swap it out without any customer noticing.
At Grus Drinks, where we import and distribute premium wine in New York and Toronto, we do not buy wine by the tanker, and this report is a reminder of why that choice matters right now. A bottle with a named producer, a place and a clear style keeps a shopper's attention when the anonymous blend gets cut. My read is that the shrinking volume in 2026 is mostly a correction at the bottom of the market, and that producers who own their label and their story will keep their shelf space while bulk sellers compete on fractions of a cent per litre.