The landscape of global wine consumption has experienced a series of intriguing shifts since 2009 after financial crisis, marked by changes in top consuming countries and evolving trends. This article uses visualisation to show how world’s top wine countries have changed from 2009 till now using OIV data.
Changing of the Guard: US Overtakes France
The wine consumption hierarchy saw a significant transformation in 2010 when the US surpassed France to become the world’s top wine consumer. The change heralded a new era in the wine industry, with the US emerging as a dominant player in wine consumption and has since stayed that way. In fact, as you will see from the race chart, its lead has widened since 2016, leading over the runner up by over 4 mhl in the year to eventually close to 10 mhl by 2022.
China’s Ascent and Subsequent Decline
One of the most remarkable stories in wine consumption has been China’s journey from relative obscurity to prominence within a short span. Over the years following 2009, China’s wine consumption witnessed a gradual and impressive rise, peaking in 2017. Granted, there was regression as you will see from the chart, after 2012, its consumption contracted following the anti-corruption clampdown but after 2014 it steadily grew and peaked in 2017 with 19.3 mhl.
However, the subsequent years saw a decline in China’s wine consumption. Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, its wine consumption has been dropping by 2 mhl each year. By 2022, its consumption plunged to 8.8 mhl, less than half of the consumption volume recorded in 2017 and below the volume recorded at the turn of the millennial in 2000 as shown in the chart above.
Here are some more interesting facts from our analysis:
- In 2022, the top wine consumers shown in the chart, account for 72% of world’s total consumption.
- Europe still ranks as a significant wine consumer, accounting for roughly 50% of world’s total.
- Japan’s wine consumption over the years has remained very stable. Since 2014, its wine consumption has consistently been around 3.5 mhl.
- In South America, Argentina ranks as the biggest wine consumption market, peaking in 2013 with 10.4 mhl.
- Though Portual pales in total consumption volume against its EU neighors in France or Italy, it has however the highest per capita consumption of wine at 67.5 liters.
