alcohol

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.

This article on alcohol consumption trends is really interesting. My take away from it is that people used to be drunk all the time. According to some of the data cited in the article, people in Northern Europe used to drink about a liter of beer a day and about a liter of wine a day in Southern Europe. That is a ton of drinking. Of course, water was basically poison, so it makes sense.