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You can’t find a bottle of wine for under $5 in most Canadian liquor stores, despite the fact that low-cost vino makes up 70 per cent of wine consumption globally. The irony was not lost on the crowd at the Jan. 22 Vinexpo news conference that detailed the results of a global study on current wine and spirit trends. They even giggled after seeing a chart breaking down world wine consumption by price in 2007 to 2011 with a forecast to 2016. In 2011, almost 70 per cent of wine sales were for bottles under $5 USD. Twenty-one per cent were for bottles priced between $5 and $10, and the remaining nine percent were for wines costing more than $10. The next chart broke down Canada’s consumption in the same way, only there wasn’t even an under $5 category (see the first two slides below).

But Vinexpo chairman Xavier de Eizaguirre–and Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s managing director–looked on the bright side of Canadians having practically no access to wines $5 and under. They tend to be of poorer quality, he said. Think of it as training our palates to not accept cheap plonk.

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