Probably many of you have seen the loud news that Russia has become the second fastest wealth-growing country in the world with a 37% increase in wealth from 2020 to 2025.

This report was made by respected people from the Swiss bank UBS; some wine producers (and not only producers and not only wine) use such reports to justify their high prices, and I especially like the phrase about "you need to reach SberPrime customers, and then everything sells itself."

In short, I went looking for the report to study the topic in more detail.
Initially, it turned into an ultra-longread, but I shortened it, leaving important tables in the post "to think about" and draw conclusions yourself.
But I really want everyone who works with wine and other similarly consumed products to read this post.

In terms of the number of millionaires, Russia ranks 18th in the world, with a total of 447,000 dollar millionaires.
It is important to consider the research methodology: the calculations included real estate, cars, bank deposits and investments and subtracted all debts, so some of you reading this post are also millionaires according to this methodology please comment below

From this methodology, we can conclude that only 31.2% of Russian wealth is in financial assets (stocks, bonds, deposits), while in the USA it is almost 79%, in Switzerland about 65%, and even in China almost 52%.

What conclusion can be drawn from this conclusion?
The main wealth of Russians is not in liquid financial assets, but in real estate and other non-financial property.
Plus, do not forget about the rise in apartment prices (which are taken into account when calculating the number of millionaires).
This means that a formal millionaire may not actually have free money for "super-consumption" of wine (art, clothing, etc.).

I myself made an additional table on the share of millionaires, and even with this methodology, only 0.31% of the population in Russia can consider themselves millionaires; compare with other countries, it is very revealing.

According to the Gini index (inequality), Russia shares first place with the UAE (a sudden neighbor, of course).
Some of you might say, well, inequality is great, it means there are many potential clients and they need to demonstrate their status somehow, and let my wine be that tool.
But the half-empty (even nine-tenths empty) houses on Ostozhenka/Prechistenka and other luxury areas of Moscow suggest that Russian millionaires prefer to live a little in other places, so they cannot be considered potential consumers of domestic wine, unless they drink their annual norm during the couple of weeks a year they spend in Russia.
Plus, they are often "well-traveled" people who have been to Burgundy and other overseas appellations, and stories about "but it's all our own, all natural" do not work on them.
And if they do live in Russia, their needs are met by several specialized import companies with good service and approach.

By the way, even here there is inequality, but already among millionaires and billionaires: if in terms of the number of millionaires we are in 18th place, then in terms of billionaires we are confidently in fifth place in the world after the USA, China, India, and Germany.

I won't grumble much more; I attached the report in the first comment (in English).