Wine Growers Canada (WGC) was delighted to collaborate with BMO on the 2025 BMO Wine Market Report, a landmark publication that significantly expands its scope to include a comprehensive survey of Canadian wineries.
This augmented North American perspective provides invaluable market data and consumer insights, offering a more complete picture of the challenges and opportunities facing the wine industry across the continent. The 2025 BMO Wine Market Report, the second edition of this important document, highlights an industry grappling with a complex mix of optimism and increasing challenges.
Despite a challenging 2024, vintners entered 2025 with optimism, which appears to have been well-founded in some areas, but met with new, daunting hurdles in others. Political and economic instability, along with excess inventory from the pandemic surge, have made business management difficult. A disappointing Q4 2024 revealed deeper consumer demand challenges than anticipated. The shock of U.S. tariffs and retaliatory measures imposed in early 2025, particularly impacting the Canadian market for U.S. wine exports, adds another layer of complexity.
However, the report also offers glimmers of hope, noting that the total U.S. wine market value grew four per cent in 2024, and many North American wineries experienced double-digit sales growth through expanded direct sales and distribution. The inclusion of data on Canadian wineries, with a total wine market volume of 53 million cases in 2024, is a significant addition. The report suggests that a restructuring of global trade, though painful, might ultimately help improve the flow of Canadian wine across provincial borders as wineries increasingly focus on direct sales.
WGC commends BMO for this expanded and insightful report and is committed to increasing the number of Canadian wineries participating in the 2026 and future BMO Wine Market Reports to ensure even more robust and representative data for the industry. This ongoing collaboration will be vital in supporting Canadian wine producers as they adapt to evolving market dynamics and consumer preferences.
Read the full report at www2.bmocm.com/2025-wine-report.
