Recent trends in declining US wine consumption

We have all read warnings about declining wine consumption over recent years, especially in the USA. There are a few things about this situation that are worth summarizing here, based on recent reports from the national Gallup survey organization’s Latest Insights into alcohol consumption (eg. U.S. drinking rate at new low as alcohol concerns surge).

First, let us make it clear what we mean by declining alcohol consumption. Gallup summarizes U.S. alcohol usage since 1939 as in this first graph. Note that it is clear that usage was fairly consistent from roughly 1980 through to 2020, but that it has decreased notably over the past half-decade.

We can now take a look at which parts of the previously drinking population are estimated to have recently stopped drinking (between 2023 and 2025). This table summarizes my calculations from the Gallup data.

Recent trend in percentages of U.S. adults who report they drink alcohol, by subgroup

All U.S. adults	12.9
Gender
Men	8.0
Women	17.1
Race/Ethnicity
White adults	17.9
People of color	3.7
Age
18 to 34	15.3
35 to 54	15.2
55 and older	8.2
Annual household income
less than 40.000	25.9
40.000—99.999	6.9
100.000 or more	16.5
Party ID
Republicans	29.2
Independents	9.8
Democrats	4.7

You may make of these numbers what you will, especially with regard to White, Female, Poor, Republicans. It is clear that only a subset of adults have decreased their alcohol consumption, but it is not a small subset.

The often-given reason for these declines has to do with changing perception, over the past decade, of the health effects of alcohol. This situation is summarized in this next graph, also from Gallup. Those people who think that even moderate alcohol consumption is bad now out-number even those who think that it makes no difference (let alone think it is good for you!).

I have discussed this latter topic in more detail in a recent blog post (WHO has an unattainable requirement for health and wine).

Chimpanzees, humans and drinking wine

You may have seen some recent posts about alcohol drinking by chimpanzees. For example:

• Wild chimps consume the equivalent of two glasses of wine a day
• In the wild, chimpanzees likely ingest the equivalent of several alcoholic drinks every day
• Berkley finds chimps consume same as two glasses of wine daily

The basic claim is that chimpanzees naturally consume alcohol when they eat fermenting fruits in the wild. The conclusion from this is that we probably got our own predisposition to alcohol consumption from the ancestor that we share with the chimpanzees.

This alcohol claim about chimpanzees is like saying: “our cousins drink alcohol and so we do too, because our shared ancestor did”. This conclusion is the one also arrived at in the original science article quoted by the web page references above (Ethanol ingestion via frugivory in wild chimpanzees).

For those of you who are unclear about this situation, consider the above diagram (taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica article: Human evolution). In this diagram, we are labeled as “Homo sapiens”, and chimpanzees are labeled as “Genus Pan”. Evolutionary time in this particular diagram proceeds from left to right, and so our most recent common ancestor (ie. the one from which both humans and chimpanzees descend) is clearly indicated. This is simply the same as saying that my cousins and I share at least one pair of grandparents (through either our mothers or fathers).

It does not follow, however, that my cousins and I share all of our characteristics, and that we inherited them from those shared grandparents.

However, the formal scientific study of evolutionary history, sometimes called cladistics, actually works by observing that one group of organisms has some particular characteristic while their near relatives do not. Consider this next diagram, from my own scientific research on the plant group Lechenaultia. (My own career was as a biologist, in which one of my fields of study was evolutionary history.)

In this case, evolutionary time proceeds from right to left, and particular features of the plants are numbered. For example Character 20 is shown as being shared by the species “formosa” and “chlorantha”, and in this case is therefore inferred to have been inherited from their common ancestor. Similarly, Characters 13 and 17 are shared by them with “linarioides”, while “linarioides” does not have Character 20. It is this grouping of characters that allows the scientist to construct the diagram in the first place.

However, note that Characters 1 and 2 appear several places in the diagram, so that having either of these characters does not automatically make those species closely related, evolutionarily, nor that they inherited these characters from a common ancestor.

So, it does not necessarily follow that chimpanzees consuming alcohol automatically implies that their ancestors also consumed it, nor that their cousins (us) did so in the past, either. We both drink now, but we did not necessarily do so in the past, although this is taken to be the simplest conclusion. 

We would, however, be much better off if we had some more concrete evidence regarding the drinking behavior of our ancestors. Note that the original science article cited above observes: “The earliest archeological evidence for controlled fermentation dates to 9,000 to 13,000 years ago in China and in the Middle East”. This is not really all that long ago, when comparing us to chimpanzees!

Which countries prefer Beaujolais wine?

Beaujolais wine is widely recognized as one of France’s more popular (red) wines. Indeed, recently, the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) looked at France's main Beaujolais export markets 2024.

As shown in their graph (included below) the data note that the USA is by far the biggest market, followed by the UK, Canada and Japan. (Note that France is not listed in the graph, because it is not an export market for French products!)

However, this view of the Beaujolais data focuses on the size of the markets, not the amount consumed per person within those markets, which can be thought of as Popularity. In order to look at the latter, we need to take into account the population size within each country.

So, to calculate this, I divided the AAWE country total data by the Worldometer Population 2025 data for each country. However, this refers to all people, not just adults of drinking age. So, I then adjusted the data by the World Bank % people 0–14 years for each country.

This produces the final data as Euros of Beaujolais per Adult, within each country (excluding France). I have illustrated this in the next graph. This is very different from the AAWE graph (illustrating market size).

Note that Luxembourg and Belgium are way out in front in terms of Beaujolais popularity, followed by Ireland and Canada, and then the UK and Norway. Since Denmark and Sweden come next, we can conclude that Beaujolais is very popular in Scandinavia. (I quite like it myself, and I live in Sweden.)

Note that the UK, Canada and Belgium maintain a position near the top of the list in both graphs, while the USA has a very different position (it is a very large market in total). 

Anyway, the makers of Beaujolais could focus their promotional activities on the countries as listed in the second graph, just as much as those in the first list.

Australia’s best wines?

There is something different this week in the blog, as it becomes personal, and I talk about my favorite Australian wines.

Australia's best red wine

I am sometimes asked what wines I like (eg. Some personal anecdotes). Well, I can tell you what is unequivocally my favourite red wine. It is the Wynns Coonawarra Estate Coonawarra Cabernet sauvignon.

As the name suggests, it originates in the Coonawarra region of south-eastern South Australia, and it is 100% Cabernet. The 2017 vintage is shown in this picture. You can see why it is sometimes called Black Label.

My wife and I had this particular bottle a couple of weeks ago, and it was absolutely superb (as I expected).

I am so glad that I can buy each new vintage when it is released, and that I can afford it. The current release is the 2022, and it costs less than $AUD40 ($USD25). Get yourself a bottle, and put it away for at least 5 years.

You can read a relatively recent retrospective tasting here: Wynns Coonawarra Cabernet – 60 vintages tasted (“Wynns makes one of the world’s best, and best value, cabernets”).

Note also that the region is currently celebrating 130 years of Coonawarra wine.

Australia's best white wine

I can now tell you what is unequivocally my favourite white wine. It is the Tahbilk Marsanne. (Note: it used to be called Chateau Tahbilk, back in the old days.)

It originates in the Nagambie Lakes region of central Victoria, and it is 100% Marsanne (from the largest holding in the world). The 2018 vintage is shown in this picture. One of the things I like about the wine is that it lasts forever, and therefore the winery has a first release of the wines at vintage, but also has a Museum Release, at 7 years or so of age. The latter will keep for at least another decade.

My wife and I had this particular bottle a few weeks ago, and it was absolutely superb (as I expected).

I am so glad that I can buy each new vintage when it is released, and also when the museum release appears, and that I can afford both of them. The current release is the 2023, and it costs less than $AUD25 ($USD15). The current Museum Release is the 2018, and it costs less than $AUD30 ($USD20).

You can read a retrospective tasting here: Tahbilk — retrospective tasting highlights unique wine style. We actually visited the winery a couple of weeks ago, and had the usual small tasting.