Wine’s Belated Globalization, 1845 to 2022

This summarizes and updates an article originally published as Anderson and Pinilla (2022).Until the 1970s, wine was produced and consumed almost exclusively in the Mediterranean region and the nearby Levant. Today it is enjoyed in a much broader range of countries. Yet notwithstanding the dramatic recent globalization of this product, the total volume consumed is very similar today to what it was in the 1960s. The apparent inconsistency between these two facts is explained by a huge decline in wine consumption in the most wine-focused countries, the rapid growth in wine production in and exports from New World countries, the gradual move by consumers from other alcoholic beverages to wine in previously beer- or spirits-consuming cultures, and most recently a dramatic rise of East Asia as a wine-importing region.