Slaves to the grape, despair: we may be headed for a global shortage of wine if you keep up with that at-first-endearing but now-slightly-concerning level of booze consumption.
According to a terrifying report released on Monday by Morgan Stanley Research (via Quartz) the shortage of viable vino crops yielded by France in the last five years – and Europe in general, which is responsible for 60% of the world’s wine production – is symptomatic of a global shortage that’s only getting worse; supply barely exceeded demand last year and there was an undersupply of 300 million cases – the most dire shortage to arise in the last fifty years.
“Data suggests there may be insufficient supply to meet demand in coming years, as current vintages are released,” the report states blankly.
If you’re looking for someone at whom you can level a glass of blameful pinot, try America and China. The former has seen its per capita consumption double since the start of the century; the latter has casually doubled its consumption twice in the last five years. It’s projected both will consume a staggering 400 million cases of wine by 2016, a demand our “new world market” crops can’t meet.
I’d advise you to pour one out for Wine or invite you to stage a dramatic reenactment of a classic wine throwing scene from The Real Housewives of Orange County, but that would be wasteful, and also extremely lame.
Photo: Sebastian Bozon via Getty
via Quartz
