Dr Vino's wine blog

At 7:46 AM today, America hit the 300 million inhabitants mark. Whoever thought of giving this an exact time is a marketing genius extraordinaire. The 400 million expected in the next 50 years (exact minute not yet specified), what’s the likely impact on wine?

It’s likely to be good.

America is already forecast to become the world’s largest market for wine by 2008 according to VinExpo, a French trade group. Not only are Americans currently drinking more per capita, but with an expanding populace America is likely to remain the favored market for the world’s wine producers. While producers from France, Italy, and Argentina, have to look abroad for growth American producers can focus on the growing home market.

And those American producers could be smaller and more dispersed. Wine Business Monthly estimates that there are close to 4,000 wineries in America now. In 50 years, there could be 20,000. And many of those could be in the other 47 states that are not California, Washington, or Oregon.

For consumers, more local wine might mean knowing more winemakers. Wine makers could be less of celebrities and just a member of the community, a vigneron if you will. Snob value could be shed in favor of actual drink value as more wines make it on to the American table. Probably many of those will also be imported since foreign producers seem particularly clever at making and marketing wines that sell at low prices.

Wine might also finally lose some of its lingering stigma and become the choice of moderation that Thomas Jefferson thought it. Quirky laws known as “blue laws” and laws against shipping that keep wine sales different from other consumer products might have withered. The market for distribution might even be more competitive.

So let’s raise a glass to the demographer’s most likely choice of the 300 millionth American, Maria, born in LA this morning at 7:46!

tags: wine | wine consumers | American wine