American wine buyers appear to have bucked the global recession and last year consumed more wine than ever,Decanter.com reported.
“The 0.8% increase in wine consumption to 297m cases was the 16th consecutive year of sales growth, according to the statistics revealed in the Beverage Information Group’s 2010 Wine Handbook,” Decanterreported.
“As the country recovers from the recessionary environment, the wine industry continues to look positive,” Eric Schmidt, manager of information services for the Beverage Information Group told Decanter. “’We expect to see wine consumption increase to 310.7m cases by 2014.”
Domestic US wine sales grew by 1.8% to 222.7m cases whilst imports were overall down 2.2% to 74.3m cases. Going against the decline in imports, Chile, New Zealand and Portugal grew their sales in the US.