Australian seasonal drinking habits as distilled by Roy Morgan Research

The latest market findings from Roy Morgan Research has confirmed that as soon as winter hits Austra…

The latest market findings from Roy Morgan Research has confirmed that as soon as winter hits Australians are putting down the beer and picking up red and fortified wines instead.

The findings revealed that this has been occurring for at least the past decade.

Over the past 10 years, the average proportion of Australians drinking beer during the July-September quarter is 37.6%, compared with a long-term average of 43% for the January-March quarter.

Red wine drinking jumped between July-September over the last decade with an average of 33.1 per cent of Australians drinking the beverage. Fortified wine wine consumption also increased but not as significantly as red wine.

“Unlike beer-drinkers in the northern hemisphere, Australians do not tend to see beer as a winter beverage. So it’s no surprise that the proportion of us drinking it during the cool July-September quarter falls, only to peak again in the warm January-March quarter every year,” said Andrew Price, General Manager of Consumer Products at Roy Morgan Research.

“Of course, this doesn’t mean that so-called ‘winter beers’ aren’t available here, but it does suggest that marketers wishing to overcome our resistance to (or at least, inability to process) the concept have their work cut out for them,” Price said.

“Along with the corresponding increases in the proportions of us drinking red and fortified wines during the July-September quarter, our findings also reveal that Aussie adults are also much more inclined to drink hot chocolate at this time of year than any other quarter. One has to wonder, therefore, why no liquor brands have yet introduced a pre-prepared alcoholic hot chocolate into the market.”

Study confirms Australians are drinking less

The Roy Morgan Research study also confirmed that Australian’s overall consumption of alcohol dropped over the past decade. Australians 18 years and older who drink any alcohol within the space of four weeks currently sits at 68 per cent, in 2006 it was 72 per cent.