Take that, Bordeaux!
America beat out France as the world’s largest wine market for the first time in 2013.
US consumers bought 2.91 billion liters of wine in 2013 while French wine consumption plunged 7 percent to 2.81 billion liters, the International Vine and Wine organization OIV announced Tuesday.
“In countries such as France, Italy and Spain people used to drink a lot of wine, but consumption habits are changing,” OIV director general Jean-Marie Aurand said at a press conference in Paris.
“Meanwhile US consumers tend to appreciate wine more and more and their population is larger,” he said.
But Americans are a long way away from dethroning France as the biggest wine consumers. The average French person drinks a little more than a bottle of wine a week, six times more than the average American, according to per-capita figures from 2011.
Though France produces less wine than neighboring European countries like Italy and Spain, it is the top wine exporter with about $10.7 billion a year in revenue.