Wine consumption throughout the USA

Wine has played an important part in United States history, since the 1500s (with Spanish and French settlers; see: The evolution of wine in America). As but one example, it has been noted (In Vino Veritas):

According to records, in 1801 Thomas Jefferson spent “$6500 for provisions and groceries, $2700 for servants (some of whom were liveried), $500 for Lewis’s salary, and $3,000 for wine”, after taking up residence in the President’s House, upon his inauguration as the third president of the United States.

So, they spent half as much money on wine as on food. Those politicians and their guests did quite well for themselves, didn’t they? *

We might therefore now look at wine in the modern U.S. world.

We could start by simply looking at the amount of wine consumed per person per year, over the past century or so. This is shown in the above graph (from: U.S. wine consumption), based on all wine types including sparkling wine, dessert wine, vermouth, other special natural and table wine. Clearly, there has been a general increase in consumption per person through time, illustrating a growing wine industry.

Note the dip 1943—1947, with the exception of 1946. The reason for this should be obvious, given world events at the time. On the other hand, the dip during the period 1987—2006 seems to be based on a shift in both population (ie. the baby boomers coming of age), along with a decrease in the concentration of the alcohol consumed (eg. less vermouth, more light beer). Also, an increase in alternative alcoholic beverages, such as craft beers, and spirits-based cocktails.

As an aside, the Portuguese apparently consume more wine than any other country worldwide (13.7 gallons per person), followed by the French (12.4 gallons) (from: Average per capita consumption of wine in leading countries worldwide in 2022). Those Americans are way behind!

The dip in U.S. consumption in the past few years has been the subject of extensive commentary in the media, there currently being major wine over-supply relative to demand (What’s driving wine’s structural decline?). This situation shows no signs of changing any time soon (Why 2025 ‘will be a telling year in the wine industry’).

We can now move on to a look at the individual states of the USA. The next graph shows each state as a dot, located based on the state population (horizontally) and the 2022 per person wine consumption (vertically) (data from: Which states consume the most wine? and List of U.S. states and territories by population).

Clearly, most of the states form a blob in the middle of the graph, all therefore being somewhat similar. This is to be expected, culturally.

Note, however, that the most populous states (at the right of the graph) have medium consumption per person. On the other hand, it is some of the smaller states (at the top of the graph) that have the highest consumption per person. From the top, these states are: District of Columbia, New Hampshire, Vermont and Delaware. Does this surprise you? The lowest consumption is in West Virginia and Kansas (at the bottom of the graph).

Mind you, consumption volume has generally been down recently in most of the states of the USA (Areas of strength amid wine consumption shrinkage in the US). Interestingly, some of the biggest dips (–5% or more) have been in D.C. (at the top of the graph) and Kansas (at the bottom).

Finally, we could look at a few individual cities, in terms of the current average cost of their wines (from: Most expensive cities for wine are all in the US). This table lists the top 11 in the world, this year, with 8 of them being in the USA. Note the presence of San Francisco and Oakland, but not, for example, Los Angeles.

Rank	City	State / Province	Average price of a bottle of wine (US$)
1	New York	NY	$20.00
2	Columbus	OH	$18.00
3a	San Francisco	CA	$17.75
3b	Oakland	CA	$17.75
4	Philadelphia	PA	$17.00
5a	Launceston	Tasmania	$16.45
5b	Hobart	Tasmania	$16.45
6a	Washington	DC	$16.00
6b	Denver	CO	$16.00
7	Tucson	AZ	$15.50
8	Victoria	British Columbia	$15.30

So, there you have it. Wine consumption is decreasing, but this matters more in some states than in others; and there are definitely some cities not to drink wine in!

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* For a recent discussion of the United Kingdom government’s wine cellar (£3.8 million = $5 million), see: UK government spends over £97,000 restocking its wine cellar.