Wine consumption versus beer and spirits in the USA

Last week, I wrote about the fact that For most Americans, wine is not a big deal, discussing just how few people in the USA drink wine regularly. This week, I will look at the comparison with beer and spirits consumption.

I have briefly looked at this before, at the global level in 2016, in my post on Putting the wine industry in its place. The graph in that post looked like this first one, showing that beer was way ahead of wine in consumption, actually being number four globally (just ahead of coffee). Wine was a bit ahead of spirits, which was way ahead of RTDs and other pre-mixed drinks.

A quick look at the situation in the USA, since World War II, has been provided by VinePair (America’s consumption of alcohol over time). The next graph shows the United States’ consumption of wine, beer and spirits in gallons per capita (vertically) over six decades (horizontally). Clearly, beer consumption (in red) has been out in front for the whole time, although spirits consumption (in blue) got close in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Wine has never been in the picture, although it has been steadily increasing in consumption the whole time. Note that, by comparison with wine, beer consumption has been slowly decreasing since the beginning of the 1980s, while spirits has been up and down like a yo-yo.

We can look at some slightly more recent data using the Silicon Valley Bank US Wine Industry Report 2022 (which has been summarized online by Per Karlsson, in: The US wine industry in 2021 did well or great, but huge challenges are coming). The data in the next graph shows US per capita consumption of beer, wine and spirits (vertically) over only the most recent four decades (horizontally). However, note that the information is standardized to the consumption in 1977, so that all three lines start at the same place (on the left). What this does for us, is emphasize the slow decline in beer consumption over the past four decades, and the slow increase in spirits consumption this century. Wine, on the other hand, after an increase in consumption starting 30 years ago, has suffered a decline in recent years (which were not included in the previous graph).

This pattern is also reflected in people’s stated preference for beverage (as opposed to actual consumption). The next graph comes from the Gallup polling organization (Most in U.S. say alcohol adversely affects drinkers, society), covering the percentage of each stated preference in the USA over the past 30 years. Beer preference has declined during that time (light green), and spirits have increased recently (dotted red), while wine has remained steady (dark blue). That is, for wine, consumption has decreased but not stated preference!

Nevertheless, in spite of the slow decrease in beer consumption, and the general increase in wine consumption (at least until very recently), at a global scale the USA is definitely still a beer country, as I have shown before (Beer countries and wine countries). Indeed, the AAWE Facebook page has recently shown (World’s top 50 beer producing countries in 2021) that the USA is the world’s second biggest beer producer, behind only China.

Note, also, for your amusement, that VinePair has a Map of the United States of Alcohol, showing you who drinks what where, within the country.

Finally, in looking at the present and the near future, we have The incredible, overlooked rise of wine-based BeatBox RTDs (ready to drink wine mixes):

According to IWSR (International Wine and Spirits Research) Drinks Market Analysis, RTDs overtook spirits and wine in 2021 to become the second-largest alcohol category by volume in the U.S., behind only beer. The organization (Distilled Spirits Council of the United States) expects RTDs to represent as much as 25 percent of total alcohol sales by 2024.

Now, that would be a big change!