According to the statistics office, Germans drink significantly less sparkling wine than ten years ago, but on average they still drink 38 glasses a year. The federal government continues to collect millions thanks to the sparkling wine tax.
Whether sparkling wine, Prosecco or champagne: In Germany people like to toast with sparkling wine on festive occasions such as Christmas and New Year’s Eve. In 2022, 267.8 million liters were sold in this country, as the Federal Statistical Office announced. On average, each person aged 16 and over drank 38 glasses of 0.1 liters each.
“Per capita consumption was therefore slightly higher than in 2021, which was even more affected by the Covid-19 pandemic,” said the statisticians. At that time, festivals and celebrations only took place to a limited extent in order to avoid infection with the coronavirus. In a ten-year comparison, consumption fell by more than a fifth (21.2 percent): in 2012, every person aged 16 and over drank an average of 49 glasses of sparkling wine.
352 million euros in revenue
The basis for this evaluation is the tax statistics. The sparkling wine tax, which was introduced more than 100 years ago to finance the imperial war fleet, is still levied on sparkling wine, prosecco and champagne today. Last year, the federal government collected around 352 million euros from the sparkling wine tax.
“This means that it only had a share of 0.04 percent of the total tax revenue of the federal, state and local governments,” said the Federal Office. For comparison: 600 million euros recently flowed to the federal states from the beer tax, which, in contrast to the sparkling wine tax, is a state tax.
Important sales for Grocery store
Sales of sparkling wine are always particularly high, especially in the last two weeks of the year: last year, according to market researchers from GfK, particularly above-average sales were achieved with confectionery, wine and sparkling wine, hot drinks and spirits in the two weeks before Christmas.
Christmas business is very important for the food retail sector. According to the food trade association, December is the highest sales time of the year. During Advent, weekly sales increase from around 3.5 billion to up to 4.5 billion euros up to the week before the Christmas holidays.