In which countries is wine the greater part of the alcohol market?

Actually, there appears to be only one country where wine is >50% of alcohol sales, by volume — Italy.

This information comes from The International Spirit and Wine Record. The graph below shows the data for those 78 countries where wine sales exceeded 1 million 9-L cases (a dozen bottles) for the year 2017. The vertical bars show us the number of wine cases as a percentage of the total number of cases of alcohol (i.e. including beer and spirits). [Note: only every second country is labeled.]

Globally, wine consumption comprises only 10% of the alcohol market. There is only one country where wine sales exceed 50%, and only 8 countries where sales exceed 33%.

Of the top 5 countries, 4 are in Europe; and 8 of the top 10 are located there (as are 14 of the top 20). These are the countries where 2017 sales exceed 20% of the alcohol market:

Italy France Georgia Portugal Greece Switzerland Montenegro Uruguay Slovenia Malta Argentina Morocco Denmark Uzbekistan Hungary Sweden Macedonia Belgium Luxembourg Chile Israel Netherlands Moldova Austria Germany Australia Serbia Romania

56.6% 48.5% 46.1% 44.3% 41.0% 36.1% 34.7% 34.2% 33.1% 32.9% 32.5% 31.6% 28.7% 28.3% 26.7% 26.4% 24.4% 24.1% 24.1% 22.2% 22.0% 21.7% 21.7% 21.6% 21.6% 21.3% 21.1% 20.4%

Surprisingly, Spanish sales are at only 16.8%, which is unexpected for one of the world's top-3 wine producers — compare with Italy at 57% and France at 48%. Even some of the top importers are at relatively low levels, with the USA at 10.4% and the UK at 17.3%.

The countries at the bottom of the list are mostly those where beer consumption predominates, including India (0.3% wine), Vietnam (0.4%) Thailand (0.4%) and the Philippines (0.6%). The biggest potential wine markets include those with extremely large populations but currently low wine percentages, such as India, China (2.3%), Brazil (2.4%), and Indonesia (3.1%). Mind you, the USA currently seems determined not to participate in the Chinese market.

Other countries with low percentages have traditionally been known for relatively high spirits consumption, including Poland (3.4% wine) and Russia (7.7%). Indeed, this is why some of the Nordic countries long ago introduced government alcohol monopolies, to try to get people away from binge drinking of spirits, and move them to lower-alcohol beverages such as beer and wine. They seem to have succeeded: Sweden (26% wine), Norway (19.4%), and Finland (11.0%). Beer is therefore probably the most popular beverage in these countries.