« The Transitivity of Timetables | Main | The Audacity of Daily Tracking » Beer: It's What's For Dinner26 Jul 2008 01:02 pm
Beer is back, regaining a large lead over wine as America's favorite alcoholic beverage after wine threatened to close the gap around 2005. Fascinatingly, I see no plausible way of correlating this "beer track"/"wine track" data with anything happening in politics. Comments (40)
Might it correlate with an economic downturn? 
Like the Sunni Awakening, beer's revival was caused by the surge of U.S. forces into Iraq in mid-2007.
Do we know if the spike in the wine trendline is a function of the popularity of the film "Sideways?"
Two of the three hottest summers since 1970 were 2006 and 2007: http://www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/a/how-hot-have-past-several-summers-been Presumably that boosted beer consumption - probably white wine, too.
Beer is obviously not just for breakfast anymore. But I do see something interesting. When it was supposedly popular to forgo French wine because of their failure to support our war in Iraq, wine still held its ground. It wasn't until Sarkozy was elected that wine started losing popularity. I guess the right-wing boycotts don't really have much effect.
On the other hand, it's only as "favorite" as a drink that can win 42% in a contest with wine and liquor as the favorite drink. One might as well say the winner is the wine-or-liquor, because they won 54%, not just 42%. I'm only pointing this out because ever since that liberal-versus-conservative lifestyle article printed a few years back that featured a bunch of bogus stereotypes we were all supposed to obsess over, the conservatives have kept bringing up this association between conservatives and beer, and liberals and wine. So if anybody wants to say we're a nation of beer-drinkers, well, we're a nation of 42% beer-drinkers, that is going to vote in Obama in November. Just for the record, I usually drink beer. Like, a lot more usually.
it's the Cindy McCain distributorship surge. why isn't it presumptuous for a 72 year old man to run for a demanding job like the President of the US?
It's getting harder to buy bad beer in this country, unless you make a deliberate choice. Improve the product, improve the sales.
It's interesting-- one can just dismiss it, like Matt does, or see these details as the bricks from which one builds a propaganda wall. People in the U.S. think of beer more as a drink of the lower social classes and wine more as a drink of the upper social classes. So the conservatives' aims of attracting more voters and breaking our liberal coalition is served not only by trying to get the public to associate them with populism more (as we can all see they've been doing) but probably by trying to get the public to associate them with beer (and conversely, liberals with wine) as well.
It's worth noting that beer has become a lot more interesting the past few years with the growth of so many microbrews.
It's getting harder to buy bad beer in this country, unless you make a deliberate choice. And a lot easier to buy beers that cost as much as wine, thanks to microbrewing, foreign imports, and the abolition of the 'cap' on beer strength in a number of states. You're soon going to get people talking about 'elitist liberal beer', as opposed to the macrobrews that keep the McCains in their ten homes.
dry_fish, that was my first thought as well, Sideways was released in Jan. of 2005, and the only time wine is ahead is the one data point right after that date. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, maybe, but it's as good an explanation as any I can think of.
pseudonymous in nc is right, so let's not lose hope. We can still draw crude political categories based on alcohol consumption. We just need to be more fine-grained about it, distinguishing between microbrew-swilling liberals and bud-drinking hicks real Americans. I for one, suspect that Yuengling Dads, heavily concentrated in crucial states, are going to be this year's vital swing constituency. It's a commercial mass-produced beer, but it's also regionally-concentrated, so it still has the whiff of authenticity. It's pretty cheap, but it isn't awful. Its drinkers could go either way, really. You heard it here first.
Damn, there was supposed to be a strikethrough on the word 'hicks'. Stupid limited html
They probably just aren't weighting their alcohol ID samples right. Everyone knows that the U.S. drinketorate is at a higher percentage of winos than at any point in the past decade. Let these flawed Gallup numbers lull beer guzzlers into a false sense of security, and we'll see who's right on March 17.
yeah, but the "wine bubble" also occurred at the expense of liquor, which isn't as clearly an inferior good. I'd say housing bubble is a makes a better explanation for the divergence between wine and beer that happened around mid 2007. I think people were still using the equity ATM up through at least the end of 2006.
I see no plausible way of correlating this "beer track"/"wine track" data with anything happening in politics. You will never make the first rank of punditry if you retain this foolish insistence on "plausible."
Yuengling Dads? Wow. May the Good Lord Chesterfield bless you.
Ummm, Beer is cheap....a good bordeaux, not so much. It's the economy....adding stupid is optional.
Southpaw wins.
Southpaw indeed wins, but rea deserves at least an honorable mention.
There are three reasons I'm drinking a lot less wine than I did a few years ago: There are thousands of imported wines that were a dubious value at $10/$15/$20 and are now (thanks to the dollar's fall) a completely asinine proposition at $14/$20/$28. There are lots of California wines that have been "reprofiled" in recent years, likely in an attempt to get high ratings from a certain Mr. Parker. Parker may like 'em, but lots of the rest of us think they got to tasting homogeneous, and more often than not like crap. Isn't there anyone left in CA who learned anything from Robert Mondavi et al? Jeff Berry's books on old-school Tiki drinks. Dude, properly made rum drinks are awesome. Who needs wine when you can have a Zombie?
> I think people were still using the equity ATM up through at least the end of 2006.
They are probably holding onto the wine because they are sure that "the price will come back".
Per the comments, the more interesting split is, indeed, between microbrews (also known as 'beer') and that swill that businesses like spouse McCain pollute America's tables with. Re: economics, good beer (aka 'beer') is the poor main's high end ... while I may spend as much as 10-12 bucks for a 4 pack of the pricier good stuff, those brews don't go down quick, but are savored. Net 'overall drinking price' (how much I pay for an evening's consumption, not how much for a bottle) is actually down. When you combine the factors (keeping the money in the country if not local, with the smaller brewers, rewarding quality), everybody wins. Even with the higher alcohol content of some of the quality beers, the dramatically lower number of 'beers per session' (usually 1 or 2) greatly lowers the prospects for DUI as well. Like I say, everybody wins. Except Cindy McCain.
How come nobody wants to talk about liquor? Yayyy, liquor!
Yay, liquor, indeed. But, if you held a gun to my mother's head and told me you'd shoot her if I didn't choose between beer and whiskey and only one for the rest of my life ... well, sorry, Mom, it was nice knowing you. No, seriously, I'd keep the beer. There's a beer for every occasion, every meal, every time of day. The truly encouraging thing is the fact that overall per-capita alcohol consumption is climbing again. In the early 90s, there was this huge drop, and by 1998 we were drinking less than at any time since the early 60s. But by 05, we were back up to where we were in 92, before that sudden decline. This is all from here: Anyway, never trust a nation of teetotalers. And screw you to whoever called beer an "inferior product" compared to wine. To each his own, as long we're all drinking something.
Don't forget the low-carb diets that were popular in the early part of the decade. Several actively discouraged beer drinking and promoted red wine. I don't have hard numbers, but my recollection is that the low-carb craze peaked in 2005.
Sideways was released in 2004, about the time of the wine surge.
I may have told this story here before, but nobody reads the archives, so here it is again. I don't drink liquor of any kind. The reasons are: 1) I don't like drunks; 2) I don't like the taste. In Vietnam, while acting as radio operator between a Shell Oil tanker and a US Army pump station on shore, I was offered a bottle of Danish beer (the tanker was out of Amsterdam.) I took a sip. It tasted exactly like that old alcohol-based Vicks Cough Syrup your mother used to give you as a kid. After leaving the Army, I had dinner one evening in New Jersey with the late naturalist Ivan Sanderson. He offered me a glass of red wine. It tasted exactly like Danish beer to me. Fuck alcohol.
Early part of this decade wine prices collapsed due to overbuilding of vineyards during the dot-com era. So a two decade trend of cheaper decent* wine and decent but slightly pricier beer converged into the bubble on the chart. (pushed into irrational exuberance by the aforementioned movie) *it is true that the overcapacity caused a lot of crappy wine as well, made by new players who really didn't know what they were doing, or shifting production to appeal to mass tastes. (this is the source of 'i'm not going to drink a frickin merlot!') However, there were quality improvements in the low end; wine in a box did not become extraordinary, but at least is was made palatable.
Isn't there anyone left in CA who learned anything from Robert Mondavi et al? Well, there's Randall Grahm and his cohorts, making silly, funky wines. Of course, it's easier to buy them in London than in plenty of states.
The housing bubble pop combined with John's falling dollar hypothesis seems good for the popping of the wine bubble; for most of the decade there was really no difference in price of California, Chilean, and Australian wines of similar quality.
This weekend, 80 (yes, eighty!) of the Oregon brewers are assembled on the grass in the park (on the Willamette River in downtown Portland) where Barak Obama attracted 70,000 to a campaign event. Oregon Brew Fest! Many restaurants/pubs here have more than 50 draft beers on tap year round. So progressive = beer (quality stuff). Hey, even PBR in cans is popular with the hipsters and music groupies and other 'regular' folks. Meanwhile, Oregon is a leading grower/vintner of wines - especially Pinot Noir (BLACK!!!) - and we luv our wines too. Maybe that's the liberal crowd instead of the progressives. So, what's in your wallet, errrr, glass?
RSH - Sounds like you need to get your taste buds checked if Danish beer tastes to you like Vicks - or if red wine tastes like beer (which tastes like Vicks)
Wasn't 2003 the time when the media were full of the speculation that red wine stopped heart disease, or cancer, or just made the French healthier? And where's the Zima list on the chart?
Bad news for the price of beer (no wonder select 12 packs only go on sale every 3-4 weeks now; I should buy more than 1 at a time). Good news for the price of wine (I thought we might be seeing the last days of the under ten dollar delicious Chardonnay [on sale] but perhaps the values will linger; you wonder if someone will make a genuinely drinkable 7.99 sale price pinot noir [ho ho ho]).
i'd chalk up wine's run to the onslaught of atkins mania, that has obviously peaked by now, and people are regaining their senses.
It would be interesting to see whether actual sales and consumption figures track these survey responses. Maybe people are just answering the survey question differently, due to shifting perceptions of what the cool kids are doing.
Comments closed August 09, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
No, no, no. Whiskey is for dinner. Beer is what's for breakfast.
Posted by too many steves | July 26, 2008 1:25 PM