TOKYO -- Japan's Mercian will stop selling France's Beaujolais Nouveau wine, a variety that was once hugely popular in Japan but has been falling out of favor, as rising import costs eat into profitability.
Beaujolais Nouveau is a nouveau wine, a type that can be sold in the same year the grapes are harvested. It is produced in the Beaujolais region of France and released on the third Thursday of November each year. Mercian, a unit of Kirin Holdings, has decided not to sell the wine in the autumn of 2025, and does not plan to from 2026 onward.
A group company that handles direct wine sales will continue to offer the product.
Mercian began importing and selling Beaujolais Nouveau about 40 years ago. At the wine's peak popularity in the early 2000s, Mercian handled about 10 different brands, but in 2024 it offered just one.
Sales have turned sluggish over the past few years while rising import costs have pushed up prices. The average 2024 price of a 500-milliliter bottle of Mercian's Beaujolais Nouveau was 2,369.1 yen ($16.20) in the first month of sales, according to Nikkei point-of-sales data, up from 1,970 yen for a 750ml bottle of the same brand in 2020.
"With wine trends becoming more diverse, we need to rethink our product strategy," Mercian President Masamitsu Otsuka said in an interview with Nikkei.
Japan is the world's largest importer of Beaujolais Nouveau, accounting for 30% to 40% of the global total. Its market for the wine is about twice that of the U.S., the next-largest destination.
But consumption in Japan has dropped in recent years compared with the boom of the 1980s to early 2000s, with the country importing about 145,000 cases -- equivalent to 12 750ml bottles -- in 2024. That is just one-seventh the imports of the peak year of 2004.
Asahi Breweries stopped importing and selling Beaujolais Nouveau in 2024. Sapporo Breweries suspended sales in 2024 and will continue to do so in 2025, a move seen as effectively ending sales of the wine. Suntory will continue to sell the product.
Japan's overall wine market is also on the decline, shrinking 5% on the year by volume in 2024. To recover, Mercian is allocating more resources to Japanese wines, which can be produced more cheaply and have improved in quality in recent years.
In place of Beaujolais Nouveau, Mercian will launch three Japanese nouveau wines in November: a red, a white and a sparkling wine. This year it plans to double its sales volume of Japanese nouveau wines from 2024.
The market for Japanese nouveau wines grew about 17% by value between 2019 and 2023. Japanese wines, produced using locally grown grapes, account for only 5% of the domestic market. But "they have growth potential thanks to their improving reputation both at home and abroad," Mercian's Otsuka said.
The pullback from Beaujolais Nouveau owes partly to environmental concerns, including the greenhouse gas emissions created by air transport. In August, Mercian will launch two types of wine in paper containers, an effort to capture demand among ecologically minded young consumers.
Mercian's sales for the fiscal year ended December 2024 rose 2% to 57.1 billion yen, according to financial statements. Operating profit was 1.2 billion, its first recorded profit in three fiscal years.
"Returning to profitability is only the start," said Otsuka. "We aim to raise our profit margin."
