This week I will show you that their consumption does now focus more on wine rather than the more traditional beer (and spirits). These data come from the Annual Database of National Beverage Consumption Volumes and Expenditures, 1950 to 2015.
This first graph refers to beer intake per person (up to 2015). As you can see, since 2000 beer consumption as a percentage of total alcohol intake per year has been less than 50% and decreasing in the three Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), whereas in Finland (the fourth Nordic country) it has remained fairly flat and just above 50%.
For wine, on the other hand (in the next graph), per person consumption has been increasing since the 1970s, although it took a bit of a blow in Finland in 2000 (the Covid pandemic).
This Finnish phenomenon can be seen in the third graph to be a result of a burst in spirits consumption at that time — apparently the Millennium seriously affected the Finns! Otherwise, Finland and Denmark have had a fairly constant per person spirits consumption for quite some decades, whereas Sweden and Norway have shown a decrease.
In my previous posts I had a look at which wine–producing countries now do well in the Nordic wine retailers, noting that they fit in line with other European countries; that is, the wine producers France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, plus the USA. This changing preference does match their accession to the European Union (EU), with its free trade within a single market (Denmark 1973, Finland 1995, Sweden 1995).
Norway is not a member of the European Union, but is associated with it through the European Economic Area (EEA), which allows it access to the EU‘s single market (Norway–European Union relations). It has contemplated joining the EU several times.
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