• August 11, 2011

Growth in the U.S. wine industry is on the increase and is expected to continue to grow over the next five years, according to the Beverage Information Group's recently released 2011 Wine Handbook.

Overall wine consumption rose 2.1% to 303.1 million 9-liter cases in 2010. The rise is due in part to a return by consumers to dining out. Total wine dollars grew to $26.9 billion last year with on-premise accounting for 44.1%. This is a gain of 2.5% from 2009 and a change from the previous two years when the recession directly affected on-premise sales.

The dollar's weaker value has resulted in a good market for exports. Imports continue to be outpaced by their domestic counterparts. This trend has been seen over the past several years as partially due to currency issues shrinking importers' margins. Domestics rose 3.0% to 229.4 million cases, and imported wines lost 0.9% to end the year at 73.6 million cases. In addition, Australian wines were down by 12.5%, and wine imports from Italy have taken the lead.--Tanya Irwin