Oh You France-y Huh? United States Finally Drinking More Wine than France

The United States is now drinking 330 million cases of wine per year, which makes the good old U S of A the world’s number one wine consumer. The new figures kick France out of the top spot it has occupied for the last nineteen years, but that kind of alcoholic upset didn’t come cheap: Americans spent roughly $30 billion on wine last year, which is about what it would cost to, say, buy Iceland or end world hunger.

To be fair, the U.S. doesn’t quite lead the world in per capita wine consumption (that honor belongs to The Vatican, which averages 70 liters of wine per person) but considering that Americans only make up 5% of the world’s total population, the fact that the United States drinks 13% of the world’s wine is pretty impressive.

Oh, France. It’s okay. You can always take comfort in your thriving economy and history of impressive military victories to combat those nagging feelings of defeat. We’ll be standing on wine-soaked American soil, raising our glasses in a toast to our gloriously drunken future.