The cost of wine consumed differs greatly between countries

A couple of weeks ago I looked at the relationship between wine consumption and wine production (Does wine production increase wine consumption?). Another interesting relationship is between wine consumption and wine value, which I will delve into here.

So, let's have another look at the data for 2015, as contained in the Annual Database of Global Wine Markets, compiled by Anderson, Nelgen and Pinilla. Tables 238 (Expenditure per capita on wine) and 23 (Volume of beverage wine consumption per capita) contain the information that we need. Per capita expenditure on wine varies quite dramatically between countries, as recently shown on the AAWE Facebook page:

As before, we need to standardize the data for each country, in order to deal with different population sizes and demographies (ie. we should compare expenditure and consumption per adult). Unfortunately, we have data only per capita, which deals with population size but not with the proportion of people under drinking age.

The result is shown in the next graph, for 49 wine-consuming countries. Each point represents one country, located vertically based on the amount of money (in $US) spent on wine during 2015 per person, and horizontally based on liters of wine consumed per person during 2015. The USA is shown as the red point.

The data show that there is a reasonably strong relationship between consumption and expenditure — the more that is consumed per person then the more money is spent per person. However, the increase in consumption accounts for only 64% of the variation in expenditure — some countries definitely drink cheap wine and some drink more expensive wine! It is the between-country variation that is of interest.

The main pink line (on the graph) indicates an average expenditure of c. $10 per liter per person (ie. $7.50 per standard bottle). The countries above the line spend more than this on average, and those below the line spend less. For reference, the upper dashed line represents $12 per liter per person, while the lower one is $8 per liter per person.

For example, the data show that France, Greece, Australia and the USA consume very different amounts of wine per person, but the people spend roughly the same amount of money per bottle, on average ($11-12 per liter). Similarly, Belgium-Luxembourg, Germany and the Netherlands also consume very different amounts of wine per person, but these people still spend roughly the same amount of money per bottle, on average ($8-9 per liter).

On the other hand, Croatia and Portugal consume more wine per person than do any of the other countries (they are at the right-hand side of the graph), and they both spend roughly the same amount per bottle as each other ($6 per liter). The three countries at the top of the graph (Switzerland, Denmark and Austria) also consume roughly the same amount of wine per person as each other, but they spend far more per bottle than does anyone else ($19, $17 and $16 per liter, respectively) — these people have more money than sense, apparently.

At the other extreme, Romania is on its own at the bottom of the graph, spending less per person than any other country where wine is popular ($1.50 per liter). The Ukraine consumes much less wine per person, but spends only slightly more ($2 per liter).

Finally, I will point out who appear to be the real silver-tails. Neither Japan nor Singapore are big wine-consuming countries, but when they drink wine they do spend a lot on it, $45 per liter per person and $38 per liter per person, respectively. These high prices can't all be taxes, although (like Switzerland and Denmark) most wine is imported, and thus possibly more expensive. Business gift-giving is likely to be involved, here.