We like to think we’re cool although we might not have a definition for the condition. But whatever it means, it’s positive. Part of what cool suggests is trend-setting, not just following, but going out into the world and making original observations, noticing objects, ideas, locations, practices that stimulate our interest, the singer no one else has heard, the travel destination no one visits, and you guessed it, the wine no one has ever tasted.
Given the latest statistics on wine consumption, we are very cool. Why? Because Celebrations Wine Club members drink Italian and/or Californian wine, now the two most desirable wine categories in the United States, and probably do it almost every day, unlike most of our fellow citizens, who have yet to enjoy either one.
The Wine Market Council recently released its 2015 report on U.S. wine consumption, announcing that Americans purchase more imported Italian wine than wine from any other country. Sixty-four percent of high frequency wine drinkers surveyed in the study, those who drink wine almost daily, said that they purchased Italian wine in the last two months, followed by French wine (56%), Australian (45%), Spanish (43%), Chilean (34%), and Argentinean (34%).
Regarding California, the state makes 90 percent of all wine in the U.S. with three of every five bottles sold in the U.S. coming from California. But if you drink Californian wine and think those numbers keep you from being cool because everyone is doing it, you are wrong.
Even though California is the fourth largest wine producer after France, Italy, and Spain, much is exported. Americans drink only three gallons of wine per year, a little over a bottle a month. But that’s the average. A huge number of Americans never drink wine. So once again, if we are high frequency drinkers of wine, and for our health and well being I hope we all are, then we are trend setters.
Because of the size of our population, the U.S. is the largest market in the world, increasing wine consumption every year since 2000. But at this time, just 13 percent of us drinks wine almost every day. Twenty seven percent drinks occasionally, 24 percent doesn’t drink wine, and 36 percent never drinks alcohol of any kind. Nationally, we occupy the 39th place in the world for per capita wine consumption. Given these numbers, Celebrations Wine Club members are an esoteric bunch in a country that is just beginning to develop a wine culture. We’re cool.
What Wine Statistics Actually Measure
Numbers like the ones above come from several different kinds of counting, and the differences matter more than they appear. Shipment figures track how much wine leaves a winery or enters the country, which is a supply measure. Consumer surveys ask people what they drank and how often, which is a memory measure. The two rarely tell exactly the same story.
Per capita figures are the most misleading of all, because they divide total volume by every adult in the country, including the large share who never drink alcohol at all. The average that results describes nobody in particular. A country where a third of adults abstain and a small minority drinks daily produces the same average as one where everyone drinks moderately.
The Wine Institute maintains a long-running series of United States wine consumption and shipment statistics that shows how these categories are separated. Reading a headline about American wine drinking without knowing which measure produced it is a good way to reach the wrong conclusion.
| Measure | What it counts | Blind spot |
|---|---|---|
| Shipments by volume | Gallons or cases entering the market | Treats every bottle as equal regardless of price or style |
| Sales by value | Dollars spent | Price increases can look like growing thirst |
| Consumer surveys | Self-reported frequency and choices | People misremember, and rarely underestimate |
Volume and Value Move in Different Directions
A market can drink less wine and spend more on it at the same time. That has been the long pattern in the United States, where interest shifted gradually from inexpensive jug wine toward bottles with a stated grape and a stated place. Volume flattens while value climbs.
This is why import rankings can seem to contradict each other. One country may lead on the number of bottles arriving while another leads on the money those bottles represent. Italian wine performs strongly on both counts partly because it spans the full range, from everyday bottles to the most tightly regulated appellations described in our guide to Italy’s wine regions.
Why California Dominates the Domestic Share
California’s share of American wine production is a matter of geography as much as history. The state has a long, dry growing season, cool marine air moving inland through gaps in the coastal hills, and enough variation in elevation and soil to suit a very wide range of grapes. Few places in the world offer that combination at that scale.
That range is what allows one state to supply cool-climate whites, structured mountain reds, and everything between. The differences between growing areas are substantial, as our overview of California wine regions lays out, and a bottle labeled simply “California” may come from vineyards hundreds of miles apart.
Scale also hides diversity. Three fifths of the bottles sold in the country coming from one state sounds like uniformity, when in practice it describes thousands of separate producers working in dozens of distinct climates. The statistic measures a border, not a style.
It also understates how recently that dominance was established. California was making wine commercially in the nineteenth century, but the modern reputation of its finest districts was built over a few decades in living memory, largely by small operations that grew slowly.
Frequency Versus Enthusiasm
Surveys often sort drinkers into high-frequency and occasional groups, and the split turns out to explain a great deal. High-frequency drinkers account for a disproportionate share of what is consumed, and they also account for most of the curiosity. They are the ones who try an unfamiliar grape or an unfamiliar region.
Occasional drinkers tend to return to a small set of familiar labels, which is entirely reasonable if wine appears on the table a few times a year. The distinction is not about sophistication. It is about how many chances a person gets to build a frame of reference.
That frame of reference is what makes an unusual bottle interesting rather than merely strange. Someone who has tasted a dozen versions of a grape has somewhere to put the thirteenth. Someone tasting their first has only the bottle itself.
Wine Consumption Statistics FAQ
Why do different sources give different figures for American wine drinking?
Because they measure different things. Some count wine shipped into the market, some count retail dollars, and some count what people say they drank. Definitions of an adult population and of a serving also vary between studies.
Does a high national ranking mean a country has a strong wine culture?
Not by itself. Per capita rankings reflect volume spread across a whole population, so a small country with widespread daily consumption ranks far above a large one with a substantial abstaining population. Cultural depth and average volume are separate questions.
Is imported wine displacing domestic wine in the United States?
The two have generally grown alongside one another rather than at each other’s expense. Domestic production still supplies the majority of what Americans drink, while imports have expanded the range of styles available. Broader shifts in drinking habits are a recurring subject in our hot topics archive.