America Drinking More Wine, Less Whiskey Than 30 Years Ago

Rob Fox12 years ago

This unfortunate finding from an interesting NPR story on America’s alcohol spending habits today compared to thirty years ago. As you can see, Americans are buying a lot more wine, and a lot less hard liquor.

It should be noted this graphic illustrates money spent, not amount purchased, but basically wine and liquor have switched places. I’m guessing that this trend is at least in part thanks to the rise of cheap but relatively quality wines like Yellow Tail hitting the shelves. They’re a sort of middle tier wine option that wasn’t available twenty years ago. Back in the 80’s your options were pretty much limited to boozey grape juice or the overpriced stuff. How do I know? Obviously I wasn’t even close to the drinking age in the 80’s, but I WAS breast fed, and God could I taste that garbage wine my mom was drinking. So if you’re ever wondering where I got my drinking habits, mom, I LEARNED THEM FROM YOU! But it’s a miracle that I learned anything since I’m pretty sure all the second hand wine I ingested as an infant is what gave me ADHD!

Anyway, another probable contributing factor to this trend is the fact that in many states, like Texas, wine can be purchased in grocery stores, and later at night, while liquor sales are limited to “liquor stores” that are forced to close earlier in the evening. Also I like to think the rampant purchasing of Franzia for float trips and sorority formal pre-games contributed to this shift as well.

So keep on slapping the bag kids, but don’t forget the bottle.

• [via NPR]