Editorial Article
RTD Grows Twice as Fast as Wine on a Twelfth of the Revenue
Two rates, and the ratio between them
Ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages were worth USD 42.60 billion in 2025 and are forecast to reach USD 78.95 billion by 2033 — 8.00 per cent a year. Wine was worth USD 528.4 billion and is forecast to reach 712.6 — 3.81 per cent.
RTD is therefore growing 2.10 times as fast as wine. That ratio is the whole of the RTD growth story as it is normally told, and it is accurate.
It is also computed on a base 12.4 times smaller. Wine’s 2025 revenue is 12.404 times RTD’s, which makes RTD 8.06 per cent of wine’s value. A category growing twice as fast from a twelfth of the revenue is not overtaking anything on this forecast horizon, and the arithmetic of what it does add is the part almost nobody runs.
| 2025, USD bn | 2033, USD bn | Added | CAGR | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wine | 528.4 | 712.6 | +184.2 | 3.81% |
| RTD alcoholic beverages | 42.60 | 78.95 | +36.35 | 8.00% |
The dollars run the other way
Over the eight years both reports forecast, wine adds USD 184.2 billion of value and RTD adds USD 36.35 billion. Wine’s absolute growth is 5.067 times RTD’s, at half the growth rate.
That is the single most useful thing to know about fast-growing small categories, and it generalises: growth rate ranks categories by proportion and investors by dollars, and the two orderings routinely disagree. A portfolio decision made on the 8.00 against the 3.81 is a decision made on the wrong column. The rate tells you where share is moving. The increment tells you where money is being spent.
Where share is moving, precisely: RTD rises from 8.06 per cent of wine’s value to 11.08 per cent by 2033. It gains about three points in eight years — a real shift, roughly 0.38 points a year, and not the kind of movement that reshapes a category inside one forecast window.
These categories are not mutually exclusive, and the addition is wrong
RTD is not a sibling of wine and spirits. It is a format that cuts across them. The RTD report’s own scope covers spirit-based drinks, malt-based drinks, wine-based cocktails, hard seltzers, canned cocktails and flavoured alcoholic drinks — which means a portion of RTD volume is wine that left the bottle and arrived in a can, and a portion is spirits that left the optic and arrived in a can.
Two consequences follow, and both matter commercially.
Never add these three numbers. Wine plus spirits plus RTD is not the size of the alcohol market; it double counts whatever has been pre-mixed. The same warning applies to the USD 412.7 billion ethanol-in-beverage figure sitting in this segment, which is larger than wine and spirits put together inside a perimeter that almost certainly includes industrial ethanol.
Some of RTD’s growth is wine’s volume, repackaged. If a meaningful share of the 8 per cent is wine and spirits moving between containers rather than new drinking occasions, then RTD’s growth is a packaging and occasion shift dressed as a category shift — and the two parent categories’ volume lines are the place to look for the evidence. Wine’s volume falls 1.19 per cent a year. That is consistent with either explanation and does not distinguish them.
Where the 8 per cent is coming from
The RTD report names four structural drivers: convenience, premiumisation of pre-mixed formats, low-alcohol and low-sugar demand, and the expansion of modern retail and e-commerce. It identifies spirit-based RTDs as its largest product segment and premium and low-alcohol RTD cocktails as its fastest growing.
That last line is the interesting one, because it inverts the wine dynamic. Wine’s growth comes from the price per bottle rising while the number of bottles falls — USD 2,540 to 3,770 a hectolitre, 5.06 per cent a year, against volume falling 1.19 per cent. RTD’s fastest-growing segment trades alcohol content for price and occasion. One category is getting dearer by the unit; the other is getting lighter by the serve. Both are growing, in the same market, off the same consumer — and they are not the same bargain.
What would make this a substitution story
Two data points, neither of which we hold: price per serving for wine and for RTD, and occasion-level consumption data. Without the first, the two categories cannot be compared as purchases; a 750ml bottle at 13 per cent alcohol and a 330ml can at 4.5 per cent are not substitutes at the unit level and may not be at the occasion level either. Without the second, there is no way to tell whether RTD is taking an occasion from wine or adding one that wine never served.
Until those exist, the defensible reading is the narrow one this article makes: RTD grows twice as fast, on a twelfth of the revenue, and by 2033 it is 11 per cent of wine’s value rather than 8. It is a real shift in a real category. It is not a replacement, and the numbers that would show a replacement are the ones nobody on this site has yet measured.
Two companions frame the same market from the other end: why the wine market grows while its volume falls, and the year spirits passes wine.
More in this series: Spirits passes wine in 2031 · Fourteen per cent of the wine market is growing 1.4 times as fast · The wine market grows because the bottle got dearer.