Between 1850 and 1945, wine consumption patterns differed signif-icantly from country to country. Wine consumption grew mainly in
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those countries in which a tradition of such consumption already existed until at least the 1920s. In France, this pattern of growth per-sisted longer. There, per capita wine consumption more than dou-bled between 1860 and 1914, from which time it boasted the highest per capita wine consumption in the world. The increase in wine consumption in France and other traditional consumer coun-tries was mostly determined by the growth in per capita income. For example, an examination of per capita consumption in France from 1860 to 1938 gives an estimated long-term elasticity of consump-tion with respect to income of 0.9; in other words, during these years each 1 percent increase in income translated into a per capita increase in consumption of 0.9 percent. While this elasticity is rela-tively high—bearing in mind that we are dealing with a food and drinks product—it is nevertheless significantly lower than that of fruit, which belongs to the same group.5
Except for those countries that received immigrants from Southern Europe, increase in wine consumption elsewhere in the world was either small or non-existent. In the industrialized coun-tries (excluding France) with higher per capita incomes, the increase in consumption was significant, especially from the 1850s to the 1890s; thereafter, consumption stayed almost constant until 1930.6 In the economically undeveloped countries, wine consumption remained restricted to a tiny elite, mainly of European origin.
In sum, the growth in wine consumption from the mid-nine-teenth century to the 1920s was concentrated in Europe.7The fol-lowing table shows, for those countries worldwide for which we have sufficient data, per capita consumption of wine relative to beer from 1923–27, at the end of this period of growth. Using cluster analysis we have separated the different countries into four groups.8
The first group, a very well defined cluster in the Mediterranean region of Western Europe, includes the three main wine consuming countries, with an average annual per capita wine consumption of around 100 liters. These three countries were also, until the Second World War, the world’s chief wine producers. It should be noted that beer consumption in those countries was either very small (Italy and Spain) or moderate (France).
The second cluster comprises countries in which wine consumption reaches a medium level and beer consumption is very variable. The moderate wine consumption in Greece can be attributed to its very low income. In Switzerland, the medium level wine consumption and T h e I n t e r n at i o n a l W i n e M a r k e t 1 8 1
medium-high level beer consumption can be attributed to its distinct German, Italian, and French speaking regions, each with their dif-ferent cultural traditions. Finally, the Argentinean case is characteris-tic of a country whose Italian and Spanish immigrants possess a tradition of wine consumption.
The third cluster comprises countries with low wine and—with the exception of Austria—very low beer consumption. While enjoy-ing a certain wine tradition, production of wine in these countries is not, as a rule, sufficient to supply their respective domestic markets.
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Table 10.1Per capita consumption of wine and beer in various countries, 1923–1927 (five-year averages, pure alcohol in liters)
Wine Beer
High wine- Italy 12.60 0.12
consumption France 12.40 1.47
countries Spain 12.29 0.09
Medium wine- Argentina 5.80 0.72
consumption Greece 4.62 0.01
countries Switzerland 4.52 1.85
Low wine- Hungary 3.24 0.24
consumption Bulgaria 2.28 0.12
countries Romania 1.48 0.18
Austria 1.45 2.53
Very low wine- Yugoslavia 1.16 0.20
consumption Belgium 0.82 7.39
countries Norway 0.45 1.12
Germany 0.44 2.36
Czechoslovakia 0.34 2.47
Australia 0.29 2.29
United Kingdom 0.22 3.87
Denmark 0.21 2.04
Netherlands 0.21 1.75
Ireland 0.15 2.02
Canada 0.13 0.95
Estonia 0.09 0.30
New Zealand 0.08 1.94
Sweden 0.07 0.98
Russia 0.06 0.12
Latvia 0.03 0.19
Lithuania 0.01 0.18
Source: Imperial Economic Committee, Wine, Reports of the Imperial Economic Committee, 23rd Rep. (London, Imperial Economic Committee, 1932), 85.
Note should be taken of the medium-low income level of Hungary and the very low-income level of Bulgaria and Romania. By contrast, Austria had a high-income level, and therefore its high beer consump-tion signified that wine was not the dominant alcoholic beverage.
Finally, Anglophone, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Slavic coun-tries consumed very small quantities of wine. Of these, the Anglophone and Germanic countries were characterized by high beer consumption, Scandinavian countries with medium-level beer consumption, and the Slavic countries—where spirits were the pre-ferred alcoholic beverage—with low beer consumption.
We can conclude that mass wine consumption was characteristic of only the countries abutting the northwestern shore of the Mediterranean, namely Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and French-and Italian-speaking SwitzerlFrench-and. Wine was also consumed on a sig-nificant scale in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, southern Brazil, and Greece. Elsewhere, wine consumption was restricted to high-income groups. As noted in an official British report in 1932, “today, except in the wine producing countries, wine is a luxury beverage chiefly connected with the ritual of entertainment.”9
Wine consumption trends from the mid-nineteenth century until the outbreak of the Second World War, together with the levels finally reached in the most developed countries, suggests that ini-tially attractive demand-side prospects tended to evaporate during the first third of the twentieth century. In some developed countries, the rapid development of wine imports, as a consequence of the gen-eral increase in international trade, slowed down as wine consump-tion stagnated, or even declined in some of them. In the less developed countries, wine imports had an insignificant impact. In addition, the strong accumulated increase in consumption in tradi-tional wine-consuming countries proved difficult to sustain until 1939. Finally, the slowing of population growth also induced a grad-ually slower growth in the demand for wine, even for identical levels of per capita consumption.
Therefore, two kinds of wine demand existed. First, the demand for high quality wine mainly from the high-income sector within the industrialized countries; and secondly, the demand for low or medium quality wines in countries where wine was a product of mass consumption. In the latter case, the strong demand for wine usually coexisted with high domestic production.
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