Aussies Drinking More Wine

Filed in archive Australian Wines on June 27, 2006

Not unlike the US or the UK for that matter, Australians are behind when it comes to drinking wine versus beer.

These countries just can't compete with wine drinkers in other parts of the world.

Slowly but surely, though, they are catching up.

From ABC News:

A local winemaker says it is encouraging that increasing numbers of Australians are turning towards wine, while beer consumption is falling.

New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the consumption of wine per person has grown by 2.2 per cent to 28.1 litres.

The amount of wine available for consumption has also jumped by 3.7 per cent to 455 million litres in 2004-05.

Total beer consumption dropped from 1.8 billion litres to 1.7 billion.

Angove managing director John Angove says the figures are welcome.

"Certainly Australia has a fairly high per capita consumption of beer, so if wine is getting a little bit more of that share of the alcoholic beverage market that's good news," he said.