14 Bottles a Year

The U.S. is now #2 in annual wine consumption, rising above Italy and nearing France which remains #1. But France's position is precarious and the U.S. should take its place within the near future.

The Sierra Sun has a new article concerning U.S. wine consumption and it is well worth checking out. I am sure you will see similar articles this week in other magazines and newspapers. I previously discussed a similar article in the Houston Chronicle. The Sierra sun article repeats much from that previous article but does add some new information.

What I found especially interesting about the article was the statistic on how much wine the average U.S. wine drinker imbibes. The annual average is 2.77 gallons of wine, the equivalent to about 14 regular-sized (750ml) bottles of wines. This is just a little bit more than one bottle per month. This is the average for "wine drinkers" so it does not seem to take into consideration those people who do not drink wine.

I think it is safe to say that most wine bloggers are not average in this respect. We all probably drink far more than that in a single month.

This statistic though obviously shows why the wine industry is so competitive. If the average person is only buying about one bottle of wine per month, then how does a wine producer get their product to be that one bottle? That is why you see so many animals on labels and other gimmicky wines. Anything to give a wine even the slightest edge over another. And if they can get some loyalty toward their product, they might be almost the only wine a consumer buys.

A couple other important facts about wine buying includes that wines under $20 occupy the largest market share and that women buy more wine than men (which I have also discussed before).