US wine exports, as seen by the consumers

We are sometimes told that: Growing export demand is the key to a successful grape and wine sector. Sadly, over the past year we have seen the nose-dive of Australian wine exports to China, which was previously its biggest export market (Australian wine exports reflect challenging year). However, that particular  topic is depressing, so let's move on.

The USA is having no such problems; so, let's look at its exports, instead. However, when looking at such things, the wine industry tends to like big numbers, unless they refer to tariffs or other taxes. So, exports tend to get reported as the sum total of the amount of wine exported, or the value (or both). However, neither of these two things is of especial interest to the end consumer.

The consumer is a valuable partner in the business of wine, being the end-point of the wine trail. So, I thought that it might be of interest to look at recent US wine exports, per capita for each export market itself. That is: how do the individual customers see the US export market?

I have taken the export data from USA Trade Online, for January–July 2021. The database provides the value in million $US, for the top 60 export countries — these data have recently also been listed by the AAWE. Canada is the no. 1 market, with twice the dollar value of the United Kingdom, which is, in turn, twice that of each of Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong.

I then retrieved the population size of each of these territories from Worldometers (Countries in the world by population, 2021). Dividing the one number by the other gives us the per capita US$ value for each country. Obviously, this is an under-estimate of actual expenditure per drinker, given that the younger part of each population does not drink wine, and that there are teetotalers.

Basically, countries with small populations do not have large per capita expenditure on US wine, while countries with large populations may or may not have this. What is more interesting, however, is the geographical location of thee countries. The following table lists the 60 countries in decreasing order of per capita $US value, with an indication of their general location (click to enlarge).

Did you guess, beforehand, that the biggest expenditure would be among the islands of the Caribbean? It makes sense, though, since that is where many of the (free-spending?) US tourists are likely to be. We would be much more surprised if it turned out to be elsewhere in Central America, such as El Salvador or Guatemala, where the tourists are generally not.

Canada, as I noted, is the biggest export market, and also seems to be prepared to spend a fair amount per person. Similarly, Hong Kong is a large market, and also spends pretty well per person.

The same cannot be said of the United Kingdom, or South Korea, or Japan, which are the other large markets by value. The UK, of course, does have many competing import markets, not least Australia; and so their expenditure on US wine will be less.

Europe is very variable in per capita spending on US wine. The Scandinavian countries lead the way, having little indigenous wine production, although Norway spends twice as much as Sweden, but only half as much as Denmark.

We would, of course, be surprised if the big wine-making countries spent big on US wine; so Spain and Italy trail the others. However, France is in mid-field, along with some other wine-producing countries, such as Australia and New Zealand. Germany's similar mid-field position is interesting, because, globally, no other country now imports more wine than Germany (although most of it is imported in bulk).

Asia is also very variable, with the rich city-nations leading the way (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macao). South American countries apparently have little interest in US wine, although Uruguay is ahead of the others.

Anyway, this paints quite a different picture to a consideration solely of total value. The wine industry could usefully adopt this viewpoint for other important numbers, as it should help with an understanding of how things look to the customer, which cannot be anything but useful.