World Wine Consumption

I came across an article the other day in one of our major newspapers which quoted statistics about our alcohol consumption.
It appears Australians are drinking less alcohol now than at any time in the past 50 years.
50 years ago, beer accounted for three quarters of all alcohol consumed, but now makes up 41%.
Wine's share has increased from 12% to 38% over the same period.
The nation drinks more white than red wine with 270 million L of white compared with 190 million L of red in 2013-14.

I hadn't thought about world wine consumption figures since my days in college studying wine marketing, so decided to do a little updated research.
Here is the Top 10.

Country							L/capita
France							46.4
Portugal							43.8
Italy							37.9
Slovenia							37.3
Switzerland							35.5
Croatia							34.5
Denmark							32.9
Austria							30.3
Belgium							27.1
Greece							25.0
Australia comes in 13th with 23.3L/capita. USA consumption is 11.9L/capita. Other interesting statistics: Spain has largest vineyard area with around 1.032 million ha. France is top wine producer with 5076 ML Italy is largest wine exporter with 2088 ML USA is biggest wine importer in $ terms. China is largest grape producer with over 9 million tonnes. But the vast majority of that is table grapes. Of course stats, as always, can throw up some anomalies which are discounted. The actual largest wine consumer is the Vatican City with 74L/capita. Hard to believe that is all altar wine.