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What’s In Your Wine Glass?
Eric, a wine merchant friend recently asked this question on a social network site.
“How much money do you usually spend on a bottle of wine?”
Here are the results he published:
77.9% of respondents said they usually spend $4 to $20
18.3% of the respondents said they spent around $21 — $30
2.8% of the respondents said they usually spend about $31 — $50
0.7% of the respondents said they spent about $51 — $100
0.2% of respondents said they spent much more than $100
According to some online research from various sites, the average price for a bottle of wine in the USA is about $15. That number fits well with the highest percentage range of the above survey. Keep in mind, these are retail prices, not restaurant prices where the typical price is more like three times the retail price.
From the website ourworldindata.org we can learn that the average global wine consumption is about 53 bottles per year (for those over the age of 15), or a bottle per week.
Annual wine consumption varies by country, from near zero in some North African and Middle Eastern countries, to almost 130 bottles per person in some European countries (about 2.5 bottles per week).
From alcohol.org we learn that worldwide over 34 billion bottles of wine are consumed each year. That’s only just over 4 bottles per person per year. Hey, somebody’s not keeping up!
If the average price is $14, that means we (the world) are spending close to $500 billion on wine each year.
One of the responders to his online poll replied that they don’t drink wine, but they do buy it as a gift, and they always shop in the lowest price category.
That prompted me to respond with this.
If you don’t drink it, you probably should not give wine as a gift. Why? Because you’ll probably have no idea about the quality, taste, bouquet, etc. Especially if you’re gifting wine in the low-price category ($4–$20).
If the people you are giving it to are regular wine drinkers they will know (maybe not from the label, but if they open it).
Perhaps a box of chocolates would be a better choice…
