Every year, America drinks a little more wine.
According to the Wine Institute, we have been steadily increasing per-person intake for more than 80 years. As of 2016, we were up to 2.94 gallons of wine per person, or 949 million gallons total. (Averages use U.S. Census Bureau population data. If we attributed wine consumption to residents over 21 years old, per-person figures would be even higher.)
We are drinking more, and we are drinking differently. In 1991 and 2001, the top imported wine in America was Riunite, an Italian brand credited with introducing many Americans to Lambrusco, albeit a typically very sweet iteration.
By 2011, America had fallen hard for Australian powerhouse Yellow Tail. We drank 8.35 million 9-liter cases of Yellow Tail in 2011 — versus 2.77 million 9-liter cases of our 1991 favorite, Riunite.
Want to see how your favorite wine brands stack up? We charted data from the American Association of Wine Economists to compare three decades of wine imports.
