Industry data suggests wineries are adapting to new realities as three-year contraction shows signs of moderating.
March 4, 2026 (Atlanta, GA) — Enolytics, the leading data and analytics platform built for wineries, has released its February 2026 Snapshot Report, highlighting signs of cautious stabilization in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) wine channel after nearly three years of contraction.
The central finding of the February report is clear: “February’s performance reveals an industry adapting to new realities rather than spiraling downward.”
“While one month does not establish a recovery, the consistency of improvement across multiple metrics suggests the industry’s contraction is moderating rather than accelerating,” said Cathy Huyghe, Co-Founder and CEO of Enolytics. “We are cautiously optimistic as we see evidence of resilience and disciplined execution, even as broader market challenges remain.”
The February Snapshot also highlights the importance of operational focus in 2026. Sustained progress now depends on converting tasting room visitors into long-term customers and strengthening customer relationship strategies. The data indicates that wineries retaining their purchaser base, even amid slightly softer transaction frequency, will be ideally positioned to capitalize on a broader recovery.
The Details
Net Sales Wine for February was essentially flat at -0.1% year-over-year, despite one fewer weekend day compared to February 2025, while Cases Sold declined -2.4%, a marked improvement from the -5% to -6% volume declines that characterized much of 2023 and 2024.
The longer-term trajectory provides additional context. Net Sales Wine for the Last 12 Months improved from -2.9% to -2.4%, while Cases Sold improved from -2.5% to -2.3%. Orders over the same period improved nearly a full percentage point, moving from -3.6% to -2.6%. February marks the fifth consecutive month of improvement from recent lows across these core metrics.
Year-to-date results reinforce this stabilization trend. Through the first two months of 2026, Net Sales Wine and Cases Sold both sit at -0.4%, a substantial improvement compared to full-year 2024 declines of -3.4% and -5.3%, respectively.
Enolytics publishes its Snapshot Report monthly to provide transparent, aggregated benchmarking data to the wine industry. The full February report, including Q1-to-date performance and twelve-month trends, is available publicly at no cost: www.enolytics.com/snapshot
About This Data
This report is based on anonymized, aggregated transaction data from hundreds of DTC wineries across the United States, spanning multiple point-of-sale and commerce platforms including Commerce7, WineDirect, eCellar, Corksy, OrderPort, Offset Partners, VinSuite, Shopify, WineHub, Awtomic, and others. Year-over-year comparisons use a consistent cohort methodology—only wineries with complete data in both the current and prior period are included, ensuring changes reflect actual performance shifts rather than cohort composition effects. All metrics are computed from actual sales, membership, and tasting room records—not surveys or estimates. Individual winery data is never disclosed; only aggregate and cohort-level statistics are published. Enolytics maintains strict multi-tenant data isolation, and no winery’s data is accessible to any other participant. For questions about methodology, please contact info@enolytics.com.
About Enolytics
Enolytics is changing the way wine and spirits companies grow through the power of data. Enolytics provides data-driven business intelligence and advanced analytics to beverage alcohol companies around the world through their user-friendly platform that integrates POS, ecommerce and wholesale depletion data, a world class support portal, and coaching and consulting services that allow customers to accelerate their growth above and beyond anything they could generate with other analytics solutions.
The Enolytics team combines six decades of success in hospitality, operations and data science. A woman-owned business, Enolytics balances the warmth of wine and food world relationships with level-headed pragmatism and real-world financial savvy to deliver innovative and disruptive technological solutions to the industry. Their SaaS based solutions provide user-friendly, visually rich analysis and insights that help wine and spirits companies differentiate and succeed, particularly in the areas of direct-to-consumer sales and wholesale depletion data.
