Every time I see someone purchasing those hard seltzer beverages at the store, I think to myself “well there’s one big headache waiting to happen.” Don’t know what it is but I can’t drink hard seltzers without ending up with a pounding headache. For some, it’s wine that gives them a headache. But headaches aside, we all still love getting drunk . . . but HOW we’re getting drunk is changing.
Last year, wine drinking in the U.S. went down by almost 1%. That’s the first time in 25 YEARS that wine drinking went down, not up.
Beer drinking went down for the fourth straight year, dropping 2.3%.
But overall, we drank MORE last year than we did in 2018, and spent more on booze. So what replaced beer and wine?
Hard liquor . . . and you guessed it- hard seltzers.
The “big five” liquors . . . whiskey, vodka, rum, tequila, and gin . . . were up a total of 2.3% last year. And hard seltzers went up almost 50% so . . . yeah, there’s where all your wine and beer drinkers went right there.
You can have your hard seltzers- I’ll just stick with my wine…a nice Sauvignon Blanc or Cab will do just fine.
