Hong Bin-na, a 28-year-old part-time worker, carefully studied whiskies at a local supermarket after clocking out one evening. Bottles, sold under several overseas brands that have become familiar to her, are well arranged for modest appeal. A small video screen next to the displayed products shows a commercial where a female model avidly drinks a pint of lime-flavored whiskey highball. Other consumers in a similar age group idle next to Hong to watch the commercial. "I used to drink wine during COVID-19 but not anymore after I came across whiskies and their variants like highballs," the Seoul resident said. "They're more delicious and I like to grab a pint at a bar with friends. Whereas, wines are too much as they always come in a big bottle and also cost more." The declining popularity of wine has been evident in the country for a while as consumers started switching to whiskies, which ushered in various flavored options and cocktails with soda, juice and other beverages. They became a mega-trend, particularly among the country's MZ Generation. It was a trend that industry players in the market could not ignore. Neither could the country's wine importers, whose sales started slowing down alongside whiskies' rising popularity. Distress on their part continued to the point that some of their business performances started entering the red zone. Online wine shop Nara Cellar saw its sales plunge by 20.4 percent in 2023, compared to the previous year. The country's fourth-biggest wine distributor in 2023 logged 85.3 billion won ($64 million) in sales. Operating profit fell by a whopping 98.3 percent, logging 200 million won. The downward figures pushed the firm to face a business deficit of 1.7 billion won. The company's stock value has also dropped almost a quarter of its public offering price of 20,000 won. When the firm publicly listed itself in May 2023, its overall value stood at 197.3 billion won. As of Wednesday, it was down to 68 billion won. The grim picture is shared by Shinsegye L&B, the country's biggest wine seller. By the end of the third quarter last year, the Shinsegye Group subsidiary saw losses of 390 million won. If the figure did not improve until the next quarter, the company would turn to a deficit for the first time since 2013. The firm in 2022 registered a net profit of 6.6 billion won, a year-on-year drop of more than 57 percent. The declining performances led to the country's reduced volume of wine imports. After the import volume peaked at 76,575 tons in 2021 with a total worth of $560 million, the amount declined to 56,000 tons and $506 million last year. "Wine sellers failed to absorb the country's MZ Generation, which is the biggest reason behind their sluggish sales now," an industry watcher said. "While local makers of beer and other liquors adjusted their alcohol degrees to target a broader range of young consumers like ones with low alcohol percentages or alcohol-free, wines never tried those experiments. Wines also come mostly unchangingly in 750-milliliter bottles and are sold at prices usually beyond the level most young consumers can afford. These factors all fail to attract the country's rising number of one-person households." (ICE SEOUL)

Fonte notizia: THE KOREA TIMES