The French government is spending €200 million to destroy wine due to lack of demand.

That is interesting in and of itself but the most astounding figure in the article is the drop in European wine consumption:

European Commission data for the year to June shows that wine consumption has fallen 7% in Italy, 10% in Spain, 15% in France, 22% in Germany and 34% in Portugal…

That’s a big year over year drop. I’m sure some of it is due to high inflation in the EU impacting consumers, but there might be a secular shift in there as well as the numbers are not highly correlated with the rates of inflation in the countries.

It seems that the US also has falling consumption but not at as sharp a rate. I guess we are just not as drunk as we used to be.