America's Wine Problem

Gourmet Magazine has a thoughtful and fascinating article on it's website that discusses the strange nature of the American wine industry. Focusing in initially on Robert Mondavi and how he helped to grow California into one of the largest wine making regions in the world, the author then spirals outward, wondering why - if we make all that wine - Americans don't have that much interest in drinking it.

From the piece:

"But there was one miracle even Mondavi couldn’t pull off. For all his hard work and many triumphs, he couldn’t transform the U.S. into a wine-drinking country. We just aren’t. Despite all the two-buck Chuck we’re lugging home, Americans as a whole have never associated wine with daily life. We are stubbornly, doggedly, foot-draggingly unwilling to get with the program. Yes, this country is the biggest wine market; but that market is measured by money spent, not wine consumed. According to wine industry statistics, per capita consumption is less than three glasses a month; and even that pathetic number is misleading. "