America\'s Wine Indusrty

17 Pages 4343 Words

ago. Health concerns, together with public campaigns against drinking and driving, tempered alcohol consumption levels over the past 10 years.

Retail sales of wine in the United States, however, have risen steadily each year, from an estimated $3.3 billion in 1975 to more than $18 billion in 1999. The data suggest that the American market is moving “upscale” as consumers switch from less expensive generic wines to the finer varietals. About 80 percent of the wine consumed in this country is from American vintners (of that amount, about 90 percent is from California), with the remaining 20 percent split among the other worldwide producers.

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The current large-scale wine industry in America is barely out of its infancy, technically dating from the Prohibition era in 1933. In reality, though, it was not until the end of World War II that large numbers of Americans began to travel to Europe, where they soon developed a taste for wine and helped launch the demand for table wines in the United States. Until relatively ...