San Rafael, Calif.—Cupcake Vineyards again ranked No. 1 in Symphony IRI’s annual Top 30 Momentum Wine Brands. The California-based brand of table wines owned by The Wine Group earned the top spot based on 10 measures of sales performance. Cupcake contended against all other brands that sold at least 100,000 cases in 2011 in U.S. food and drug stores whose sales are tallied by SIRI, a Chicago-based market research firm.

This year’s No. 2 brand, Barefoot from E. & J. Gallo, moved up from the No. 3 position in 2011. Third and fourth place were awarded to two more Gallo brands, Apothic and Liberty Creek. Washington state brand Apothic from Ste. Michelle Wine Estates placed fifth.

California accounted for 25 of the 30 brands, while Washington provided three (all from Ste. Michelle.) Contributing one brand each were: Italy, Cavit Collection; Australia, Yellow Tail; and Argentina, Alamos.

SIRI chooses the Momentum brands solely by sales data, using volume and dollar sales totals, volume and dollar sales change, volume share in the price category, and five other measures. The 106 brands that met the minimum sales of 100,000 cases were given points for their rankings in each measure, and SIRI totaled the points for each measure. The wine with the highest volume sales received 106 points, the lowest in volume sales received one point, and so on.

The Top 30 Table Wine Momentum Brands accounted for 32% of table wine dollar sales and 33% of volume sales in U.S. food and drug stores where SIRI analyzes check stand scan data. The brands also represented 45% of net category dollar growth and 52% of net volume growth at the brand level.

Gallo owns seven of top 30
E. & J. Gallo owns seven of the 30 brands and Constellation Wines U.S. and The Wine Group own three each.

Exactly half (15) of the Momentum brands were from the $8+ segments, and the other half from the under-$8 and box-wine price segments. Within any single price tier, the largest number of Momentum brands (10) came from the $8-$10.99 segment.

Most of the Momentum brands experienced strong incremental sales growth, driven by higher levels of quality merchandising support (both increased distribution and weeks of feature and/or display activity). Many brands also experienced healthy distribution gains. 

Average pricing for the majority of the top 30 brands was generally lower in 2011 compared to 2010. Finally, 2011 saw several newcomers to the top 30 list, including Apothic, 14 Hands, Fish Eye, and The Naked Grape.