Global per capita wine expenditure versus consumption

I have looked before at the relationship between national wine consumption and wine production (Does wine production increase wine consumption?). Another interesting relationship is between national wine consumption and wine expenditure (The cost of wine consumed differs greatly between countries), which I will delve into again here.

Let's have a look at some data for 2015, as contained in the Annual Database of National Beverage Consumption Volumes and Expenditures, 1950 to 2015, compiled by Alexander Holmes and Kym Anderson. Their Tables 1.17 (Volume of beverage wine consumption per capita) and 1.22 (Expenditure per capita on wine) contain the information that we want. We need to standardize the summed data (total) from 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 graph, for 77 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 the liters of alcohol consumed per person during 2015. Twenty-two of the points are labeled.

Unsurprisingly, 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 expenditure accounts for only 69% of the variation in consumption — some countries definitely drink cheap wine and some drink more expensive wine! It is this between-country variation that is of most interest.

The pink line (on the graph) indicates an average expenditure of c. $US90 per liter of alcohol per person per year. So, if a container of wine contains 12% alcohol, then this equates to $7.50 per liter, or $5.50 per standard bottle (750 ml). The countries above the line spend more money than this, on average, and those below the line spend less.

Note that the people of the majority of the countries do not drink much wine at all, and consequently do not spend much money on it — these are the points clustered in the bottom left-hand corner of the graph.

Portugal, Italy, and France are the countries where the most wine is consumed per person, which surprises no-one. However, the people of France are prepared to spend considerably more money on that wine, on average, than are the Portuguese and Italians. The Spaniards, on the other hand, consume far less wine per person than any of these three countries, and the $/liter is also a bit less than for Italy and Portugal. The Argentinians are not that different from the Spaniards, either.

The Germans consume a bit more wine than do the British (UK) but spend far fewer $/liter on it — the British spend nearly 2.5x as much money per liter as do the Germans, on average. The Australians and New Zealanders are in the same ball–park as the British, not unexpectedly. The Americans, on the other hand, are not big wine–drinkers per person, nationally, and they spend very close to the average amount per liter — the silver-tails are counter-balanced by the ordinary folk.

The Scandinavian countries differ considerably from each other. Although Sweden and Norway spend about the same amount of money, Sweden consumes considerably more wine for that money. Denmark consumes twice as much wine as Norway per person, but spends only two-thirds more money. So, it is the Swedes who drink wine on the cheap, and the Norwegians who are the least thrifty of the three countries.

Note that the people of Switzerland, Denmark, and Slovenia stand out from the rest in the graph, being the countries that spend the most per liter of wine alcohol. They drink roughly the same amount as do the people of France or Austria, but are apparently prepared to spend considerably more money on their wine (these people have more money than sense, perhaps?).

However, the people who spend the most money per consumption (ie. expenditure ÷ consumption) are in the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, both of whom have very small wine consumptions per capita — these appear to be the real silver-tails in the list. They are followed in the list by Singapore and Thailand, and then Hong Kong and Malaysia, who are all in that same boat. In these countries, most of the wine is imported, of course, and thus presumably more expensive than it is in wine–producing countries. The countries who spend the least money per consumption are in Romania and Belarus, both of whom have medium consumptions per capita.

So, we learn from all of this that the world is a very variable place, and that this applies to the wine part of the world just as much as anywhere else. Only two-thirds of wine expenditure is related to the amount consumed, with the other third telling us that countries and cultures each go their own way.

Things will change, of course. For example, at the moment the Older generation in France blamed for domestic wine lull, and the incoming generations will presumably differ from this.