(Wines&Vines) - Flash sales websites continue to offer more wines for sale, defying the conventional wisdom they were just a short-term phenomenon that arose during the recession.

The websites, which sell wine at a discount for a short period of time in what came to be known as “flash sales,” offer a wide variety of imported and domestic wines at varying price points. Because Wines & Vines is focused on the wine industry in North America, Wines Vines Analytics tracks flash offers for domestic wines. The total offers for all 16 flash sites tracked by Wines Vines Analytics in 2015 was 6,234, or 15% higher than the 5,402 total offers from 2013.

The growth in flash offers was complemented by positive growth in all other key industry metrics tracked by Wines Vines Analytics. Direct-to-consumer sales totaled 14% higher than in December 2013 and surpassed $1.8 billion for the past 12 months. Earlier this month, Wines & Vines and ShipCompliant released the 2015 Direct to Consumer Wine Shipping Report. As DtC sales continue to increase, so too does the number of American consumers who can legally get wine shipped to their homes. Ninety percent of the U.S. population lives in the 42 states that allow some type of direct shipping. For more details and analysis on all the metrics visit winesandevines.com/metrics.

Special events drive offer total higher
Three flash websites held special offer events in December and that pushed the month’s total number of offers for domestic wines to 844, or 17% higher than the 722 total offers in December 2013. Invino’s 313 offers for wines from 168 different wineries was the most by any website, and several offers came during a sales event held Dec. 30. Invino continues to offer the most wines of any website, and in 2013 and 2014 its offers accounted for 23% of all offers.

Wired for Wine had the second-highest offer count at 110, largely from a special promotion Dec. 28. Last Bottle Wines had a two-day marathon of offers Dec. 18-19, but its total number of domestic offers in December was just 53, as many offers were for imported wines.

Cabernet Sauvignon is still the most-offered varietal, accounting for about 25% of all offers in 2013 and 2014. Yet in 2014 flash websites offered 26% more Pinot Noir, and the varietal’s share of total offers grew from 18% to nearly 20% while Cabernet Sauvignon’s share stayed the same.

Off-premise sales
Annual off-premise sales of domestic wine grew to $7.9 billion in 2014 at stores tracked by IRI, the Chicago, Ill.-based market-research firm. The total was up $396 million compared to 2013, and the growth rate slowed by a point to 5%. Both table wine and sparkling wine saw 5% growth.

A relatively slow growth rate of 3% in the month of December helped drag the 12-month growth rate down from 6%, where it had been since May. The off-premise sales growth rate was 7% for 2013 as a whole, so it shrank by a relatively large proportion while remaining well above the imported table wine growth rate of 2%.

Seven of the eight best-selling wine varietals and types brought higher revenues in the off-premise channel during 2014. These figures include both domestic and imported wines. Merlot was the only one of the eight to shrink in sales, coming down by 3% but still totaling $677 million in stores tracked by IRI. The leader, Chardonnay, stayed on top and grew by 3%, while No. 2 Cabernet grew by 9%, steadily gaining on Chardonnay. We included sparkling wine, to show that it would be No. 4 if categorized as a varietal or type rather than a different category of wine.

Winery hiring strong
Winery hiring activity stayed high during most of 2014. The overall job index as calculated by Winejobs.com increased 27% in December compared to a year ago and was 14% higher for the entire year. The winemaking subcategory showed the most growth throughout the year. Winemaking was 54% higher in December than a year ago and 27% higher over the entire year.