Spain's wine market has lost the fragile stability it built up over the past two years.
New figures from the Ministry of Agriculture's INFOVI report, compiled and analyzed by the Spanish Interprofessional Wine Organization (OIVE), show that wine consumption fell 4.2% year-on-year to 9.3 million hectoliters in January 2026. Over the twelve months from February 2025 to January 2026, the country's cellars, shops, bars, and restaurants sold 627,374 fewer hectoliters than in the prior period.
A Fragile Calm Gives Way to Renewed Decline
The numbers mark the end of a relatively calm stretch for the sector. According to OIVE, the inflationary shock of late 2021 and 2022 hit consumption hard, as rising costs and prices pushed shoppers and diners to cut back. What followed was a period of relative equilibrium that held steady through the year-on-year figures for August 2025. Since then, the trend has turned downward again, suggesting that whatever price stability had cushioned the market through 2023 and 2024 is no longer enough to offset softening demand.
Hospitality Holds Up Better Than Retail
Not all sales channels are feeling the pinch equally. Data from Nielsen IQ for the twelve months ending in January 2026 shows the hospitality sector — bars, restaurants, and similar venues — faring considerably better than supermarkets and grocery stores. Hospitality sales dipped just 0.1% in value and 0.4% in volume, a relatively modest slide. Food retail fared worse, with value down 0.9% and volume falling 3.8%.
Despite the sharper drop in retail, that channel still commands the lion's share of the market: 56.3% of total value and 64.1% of volume moves through food retail rather than hospitality venues. Still, the gap is narrowing somewhat, as hospitality gained market share over the period — a sign that, even as Spaniards buy less wine overall, more of what they do drink is being consumed out rather than at home.
Pricing, meanwhile, has stayed remarkably flat. The average price per liter across both channels rose just 0.3% to €6.34, a far cry from the steeper increases seen in previous years. That near-stagnant pricing suggests the drop in consumption isn't primarily a story about sticker shock this time around — something else is dampening demand.
The Long View: A Market Still Below Pre-Pandemic Levels
Zooming out, the apparent consumption trend tells a longer and more sobering story. Looking at year-on-year figures from January 2019 through January 2026, apparent consumption has ranged between 8.6 and 6.1 million hectoliters — and the most recent reading sits at the bottom of that range, at 6.1 million hectoliters. That confirms a steady, multi-year erosion in volume that predates the current downturn.
Compared with January 2019, when apparent consumption stood at 0.863 million hectoliters, the current level is nearly 30% lower. The market never fully recovered from its pandemic-era trough and hasn't returned to the modest recovery peaks recorded in the following years either.
Month by Month: A Rough Start to 2026
January 2026 closed with apparent consumption of just 0.61 million hectoliters — a 14.2% drop from January 2025. That's a sharper decline than any seen in the closing months of 2025, though the back half of last year was already trending negative:
- July 2025: down 0.8%, to 0.84 million hectoliters
- August 2025: down 3.9%, to 0.69 million hectoliters
- September 2025: down 24.8%, to 0.61 million hectoliters — one of the steepest drops of the recent period
- October 2025: down 5.6%, to 0.87 million hectoliters
- November 2025: down 10.3%, to 0.85 million hectoliters
- December 2025: down 2.5%, to 0.93 million hectoliters
Tracing the Cycle Back to 2019
The year-by-year January figures illustrate just how volatile the past several years have been for Spanish wine consumption:
- January 2019: 0.863 million hectoliters
- January 2020: 0.739 million hectoliters
- January 2021: 0.601 million hectoliters (the pandemic-era low)
- January 2022: 0.666 million hectoliters
- January 2023: 0.651 million hectoliters
- January 2024: 0.704 million hectoliters
- January 2025: 0.713 million hectoliters
- January 2026: 0.61 million hectoliters — breaking the recovery trend and returning to levels last seen at the start of the decade
Looking at the broader year-on-year swings between 2018 and early 2026, the market has moved through several distinct cycles. The deepest trough came in February 2021, when annual consumption fell by close to 20%. That was followed by a sharp rebound, with growth topping 20% by December of the same year — a bounce likely exaggerated by comparisons against the depressed 2020 baseline. From there, growth moderated steadily before tipping back into negative territory, with year-on-year change now hovering around -5% as 2026 begins.
Seasonal Patterns Persist — But Weaker Than Before
Despite the overall downtrend, the market's seasonal rhythm remains intact. Consumption typically peaks in November and December, when volumes exceed 0.9 million hectoliters a month, and dips to its lowest point in August and September. That pattern held through most of 2024 and 2025, though the readings at the start of 2026 have come in noticeably weaker than the same seasonal points in prior years.
A Glimmer of Improvement in February
There are early signs that the worst of the January slump may be easing. Preliminary data for February 2026 shows apparent consumption of roughly 0.67 million hectoliters — an improvement on February 2025's approximately 0.60 million hectoliters. Even so, that figure remains well below February 2024's roughly 0.75 million hectoliters, underscoring that any recovery is starting from a much lower base than just two years ago.
What It Means for the Sector
Taken together, the joint analysis from OIVE, INFOVI, and Nielsen IQ points to a Spanish wine market operating in a weaker demand environment than it saw through much of 2024 and early 2025. The pullback shows up in both the broader twelve-month consumption figures and the more volatile monthly apparent-consumption data, and it's affecting the total volume households and venues are buying even as prices hold largely steady. For now, the modest uptick recorded in February offers a tentative sign of stabilization — but the sector remains well short of both its pre-pandemic footing and the brief recovery highs of recent years.
Sources: Ministry of Agriculture INFOVI report; Spanish Interprofessional Wine Organization (OIVE); Nielsen IQ.