The US is set to become the world’s number one wine consumer within a period of three years according to a study carried out by the consulting firm, Wine Intelligence for the Spanish Wine Market Supervisory Board (OEMV), which also reveals that 42.8 million consumers on major foreign markets frequently drink Spanish wines.

The North American country is a traditional market where, curiously, regular drinkers consume wine more often than in Europe. US consumers enjoy experimenting new sensations with new wines, as long as the wine in question adheres to the well established European premises, such as a cork stopper, a professional and attractive presentation, and a category in line with price. However, on a market with 73 million consumers, greater and better awareness about Spanish wines is needed, while on other markets such as Germany and the UK more work is required to enhance the perception of quality.

The Wine Intelligence study takes in a total of 146 million potential consumers in Germany, Belgium, the US, Holland, the UK, and Switzerland which provide quite unequal average minimum consumption ratios per inhabitant and year, fluctuating between 11 litres per person per year in the US, to 46 litres per capita in Switzerland.

Each country’s dependence on foreign wine imports ranges from 100 percent in the case of Holland, to 94 percent in Belgium, and up to 28 percent in the US, bearing in mind that the US is the fourth largest wine producer in the world following Italy, France, and Spain. However, in every country there is a significant number of adults who consume wine regularly, ranging from 34 percent in the US to 57 percent in the UK, and around 50 percent in the rest of the countries.

The study also reveals that Spanish wine market-penetration is quite high in Switzerland and the UK, with a total of 55 percent and 45 percent, respectively, shared between regular and occasional consumers, while penetration is relatively low in Germany and the US, with 33 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Satisfactory figures, but with important possibilities for improvement, have been registered in Holland and Belgium, where Spanish wine drinkers are at 38 percent and 36 percent, respectively.The rating given to Spanish wines by the six countries studied as a whole, from a score of zero to ten, is 6.2, ranging from 5.6 in the UK to 6.5 in the US, Holland, and Switzerland; 1.33 points behind French wines, which are always more highly rated, except by Germany which prefers to give higher scores to its own wines.