Its results were presented by the director of Xplane, Angelika Czyzewski, at the national conference dedicated to the results of the industry for 2024. This specialized agency used data from 1 thousand online interviews, which were taken from city dwellers, aged 18-70 years. The survey was conducted in February 2025.
Of the total number of respondents, 70% said that they had consumed alcoholic beverages in the last six months. The most popular drink is still home wine, which was named by 48% of survey participants. The second place was shared by beer and Moldovan sparkling wines (40% each). The third place was taken by quiet bottled wines and divines (25% each). Next in the top ten are home-made alcoholic drinks – various tinctures, liqueurs (20%), vodka (11%), whiskey (10%), bottled liqueurs and Prosecco/ Cava (7% each).
Of course, the leadership of house wines is upsetting, but their share in the preferences of urban consumers has significantly decreased. There were times when it was not about half, but at least 70%. But in the whole country this indicator will certainly be much more than half. In any case, the work to promote wines made at wineries is bearing fruit. Gradually people are beginning to realize that home-made wine cannot compete in quality with officially produced wine. And the general level of consumption culture is growing.
In this top 10, it is pleasing that the top three preferred drinks include all types of wine products – sparkling and still wines, as well as divines. But an alarm bell was the appearance in the top ten of Prosecco, whose popularity in the world is spreading with the speed of a virus. And domestic producers of wines with “magic bubbles” should take this into account and not be stingy with their advertising.
Another plus in increasing the culture of consumption was the appearance of Ice-wine in the answers about the drinks consumed, which, by the way, belong to expensive wines. They were named by 2% of respondents.
In choosing wine, respondents pay attention to the following five factors – sugar content (40%), variety/color (35%), producer/brand (33%), previous experience (30%), price and advertising (29%).
Moldovan consumers mostly remain patriotic towards local wines, as 80% of the interview participants consider domestic wines to be of the highest quality. Italian wines come second and French wines third.
According to the survey, the main place to buy wine remains the supermarket. But, if in 2024 78% of respondents went to the supermarket for this purpose, in 2025. – already 90%. At the same time, specialized stores have become more attractive for buyers: over the year, purchases in them have doubled – from 20% to 41%. And online stores are also gaining popularity: over the year, they grew from 7% to 13%.
Among the supermarkets where people most often go for wine, Linella (the largest chain), Local, Kaufland, Nr1, Metro were named.
Alcohol producers need to take into account that almost a third of urban households spend more than half of their monthly income on food. Due to inflation, 91% of survey participants have started to save money on purchases, preferring to do so when discounts and promotions are available, or in smaller quantities, or choosing brands with more democratic prices.
40% of respondents began to spend less on alcoholic beverages. Only in the segment of clothing and footwear the situation with purchases was worse. Nowadays loyalty programs are important for buyers. Only one fifth of the interviewees answered negatively about it.
Since discounts and promotions on food and beverages have become of interest to a large range of consumers, the survey asked the question – how do buyers learn about them? As it turned out, first of all – from advertising catalogs, applications or websites of stores and from someone’s recommendations.
