Canadian wine sales cut into beer consumption

Statistics Canada reports that growing interest in drinking wine has cut into Canadian beer sales.

“We can’t say definitively, but if you look at the age of baby boomers in 1976 and you look at the age of a baby boomer in 2009, that might help explain the story,” analyst Jo Ann MacMillan said. In 1976 the average person consumed about 115 liters of beer, and today the average is down to 83.5 liters.

“In 1976, baby boomers were quite young. They didn’t have a lot of money and their preference would have been to drink beer. Today, when the boomers are . . . 40 years older, we have beer consumption going down and wine going up.”

Other noteworthy numbers from the report:

  • Beer’s market share had decline from 53 per cent in 1993 to 46 per cent in 2009.
  • Canadians bought 441.4 million liters of wine, 64 per cent of that red and rose. Dollar sales of red and rose have more than doubled between 2000 and 2009, while white wine sales have climbed by 50 per cent.
  • Domestic wines grabbed more market share of that increase than imported. Just over 24 per cent of all reds and rosés sold in Canada were domestic, compared with almost 39 per cent of whites.
  • Imported beer has more than doubled its market share in the last decade, to up to 13 per cent of the beer market in 2009.
  • A 5.6 per cent increase in vodka sales kept revenues up for hard liquor sales across the country, but a drop in domestic liquor sales kept volumes down. Whisky, scotch and bourbon stayed the most popular spirits, accounting for 27 per cent of all spirit sales in 2009.
  • One Reply to “Canadian wine sales cut into beer consumption”

    1. To me that says that our tastes have gotten more refined. This then would be a good thing for Craft/Micro beers.

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