Analysing wine with Google Trends

How Google Trends tells us what people want to know about wine.

Every January, wine trade communicators (myself included) attempt to predict what the future holds for wine. These tend to be predicated on empirical evidence and personal hunches - whereas a more reliable method might be to examine internet search data. Google provides historical search trends back to 2004, providing a snapshot of how the frequency of search terms changes over time.

Trends for wine critics

The first three figures concern wine critics (namely Antonio Galloni, Robert Parker and James Suckling) and illustrate the following:

1. search frequency for wine critic names worldwide since 2004

2. search frequency for wine critic names worldwide over 12 months

3. geographical breakdown of search for wine critic names over 12 months

There is a clear trend showing a decline in search frequency for Parker, which is a well-known trend caused at least in part by his retirement. What might be more valuable is the global distribution of search popularity. If I was a producer with a review from Suckling, India might be the market to target; whereas Parker still seems to have strong influence in China and Spain.

Trends for grape varieties

Turning to grape varieties, let’s explore the relative popularities of Chardonnay, Pinot Gris/Grigio (Google treats them synonymously) and Riesling. The three figures below illustrate:

1. search frequency for variety names worldwide since 2004

2. search frequency for variety names in the UK since 2004

3. search frequency for variety names in the USA since 2004

As the wine trade well knows, Pinot Grigio’s popularity has become much bigger in the last decade, but while it has overtaken Riesling in the USA and the UK, Pinot Grigio remains just below Riesling for worldwide searches. Furthermore, Chardonnay’s popularity has not waned at all - although Pinot Grigio’s popularity is much closer to catching up with Chardonnay in the UK.

Trends for Prosecco and Champagne

One of the best-known trends in recent years is the rise of Prosecco. The two figures below illustrate:

1. search frequency for Prosecco and Champagne worldwide since 2004

2. five geographies with the highest search frequency for Prosecco

Looking at the Google trends for Prosecco compared with champagne shows that the latter’s popularity seems to be unaffected by Prosecco’s increase in popularity. However, it’s interesting to note that Poland and Austria are the only two countries where there are more searches for Prosecco than Champagne. Again, that is very handy information for Prosecco producers looking to export.

Using wine data wisely

These graphs are just a limited selection of what Google Trends has to offer, and they shouldn’t be taken as representative of sales figures. However, they do provide a reliable record of broad consumer interests, and can be broken down into far greater detail than I’ve shown here. Harnessing such data offers insights that are arguably more valuable than the informed guesswork of experts.