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Brits consume twice as much wine per capita as Americans, research finds

10 September 2021 By Christian Smith

Brits consumed twice as much wine as Americans per capita in 2020, research has revealed.

brits consume more wine per capita than US

Using data from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), money.co.uk has ascertained how many bottles of wine per person were consumed during the pandemic.

The research found that Portugal consumed the most wine per capita, and while the US is the world’s biggest consumer of wine in total at more than 4.4 billion bottles in 2020, the UK drank more wine per capita.

Salman Haqqi, consumer spending expert at money.co.uk said of the findings:

“Global consumption of wine hit its lowest level since 2002 last year, but our analysis reveals the UK still drinks more wine per person than in the USA and Canada.

“As a nation, we drank over 1.7 billion bottles of wine – making us the fifth largest consumer of wine in the world. However, when considering consumption per person, the UK is still behind neighbouring European countries, Portugal, Italy and France.

“While we may not consume as much wine as those on the continent, the UK’s love affair with grapes is bucking the worldwide trend and continuing to grow. Not only this, Britain is now home to over 700 vineyards and in 2020 exported wine to over 100 countries with a value of over half a billion dollars. The UK is unlikely to ever take the largest market share of wine consumption or production, but it does potentially present an exciting opportunity for producers and investors.”

Here’s the table in full:

Portugal	613m	69.2
Italy	3.27bn	62.1
France	3.29bn	61.3
Australia	760m	37.1
Argentina	1.25bn	36.8
Germany	2.64bn	36.7
Sweden	293m	36.0
Spain	1.28bn	31.8
UK	1.77bn	31.8
Czech Republic	280m	30.9
Canada	587m	18.5
USA	4.4bn	16.3
Russia	1.37bn	11.5
Japan	467m	4.2
China	1.65bn	1.4
Switzerland	347m	0.92
Austria	307m	0.77
Belgium	347m	0.69
Netherlands	467m	0.62
Romania	507m	0.60
South Africa	413m	0.19
Brazil	573m	0.07