The State That Drinks The Most Wine In America May Surprise You

If you enjoy unwinding after the end of a stressful day with a glass of wine, you are far from alone. Wine is one of the most popular drinks in the world, after all, and humans have been consuming it since, well, pretty much forever. National Geographic noted that people have been making wine for at least 6,000 years, so you could say that it's pretty popular.

That being said, wine is more popular in some places than in others. In the United States, for example, there are some states that drink a lot of wine, while others prefer to get their drink on with beer or other alcoholic beverages. Thanks to data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism that was analyzed by VinePair, we know which states are consuming the most wine, but the state at the top of the list may not be the one that you expect.

Considering the number of wineries California has, it would be logical to guess that California drinks the most wine. While you'd be correct in assuming that California consumes the most wine by volume, that's simply due to its large population. When you look at which state is drinking the most wine per capita, though, Idaho makes the top of the list. In Idaho, residents drink a whopping 1.2 gallons per capita.

While California drinks 155.6 million gallons of wine in total each year, the amount of wine consumed per capita is surprisingly low — residents consume just 0.62 gallons of wine per capita, ranking the state at number seven on the list.

At the bottom of the list is West Virginia, where residents only consume 0.11 gallons per capita. They make up for it with other adult beverages, though, knocking back roughly a gallon of beer and two gallons of spirits annually.