Wine Consumption Norms?

Over the weekend I decided to get rid of the corks that we had accumulated over the past 18 months. We throw our corks in a basket and periodically give them to a guy who makes and sells cork boards. My wife suggested that I count the corks just to get an idea of how much wine we had consumed during the period before bagging them for delivery.

Before counting I guessed the total number of corks to be around 180. To my surprise the total came in at 347! That is way more wine than I thought we had consumed, not even counting the many screw top bottles that we drank during the 18 month period. The total also excludes wines that we drank elsewhere, which is quite a number. Lest you think I am a lush, my wife and I do always share the wine, and we regularly have visitors that help us consume 8+ bottles in a setting. It seems that we rarely drink fizzies, but there were almost 60 sparkling wine corks alone! I don’t know how much wine others consume per time period, but like a failed dieter grossly underestimating caloric intake my wine consumption estimate was way off.

Until recently my wife and I (mostly me) shared a bottle of wine with supper EVERY night. I have cut back in the last few weeks to 1/2 bottle with supper but drinking better and all seems to be working out fine. I will probably average about 200 bottles per year at this rate.

Averaged over the entire year, I would say I open two bottles per week at home. Wouldn't mind it being higher, actually.

[David M. Bueker]

Ignoring tastings and parties I average 3 bottles per week.

[James Roscoe]

Our recycling bin averages about six bottles a week, but if any of the girls are home or we have guests........ On thanks giving weekend I would guestimate we were well over 75 bottles, but that count include seven or eight sparkling non-alcoholic ciders.

typically 3 bottles/week, occasionally 4, rarely more

About one wine per weekend, with the odd microbrew thrown in mid-week

according to CellarTracker, I consumed 434 bottles in 2011 - that includes "normal" consumption and tastings/parties.

CT shows we consume an average of 300 bottles per year out of our own cellar. Wines we drink that others provide aren't in the count. So, given monthly wine lunches and dinners, I'd guess the count closer to 400.

Sam,
I recently had a similar experience. Our good friend and neighbor recently asked me for corks as she wanted to make a cork bulletin board for her new fridge. I'd been dutifully saving corks for several years and gave them all to her in a large plastic bag. When I arrive with them in her kitchen, her 7-year old son (a good friend of our own son's) blurted out "Mr. Lipton drinks a lot of wine!!" before he was hushed up by his embarrassed mother I didn't count, but would guess that there were close to 300 corks in that bag, the product of 3 or so years' consumption.

Mark Lipton

Mark,

If your estimating skills are anywhere near as poor as mine you may have been off by a factor of two, or more. I hope that the neighbors don't organize an intervention on your behalf.

PS: In an attempt to rein in our wine consumption my wife and I did not have a single sip of wine over the past seven days. We aren't doing that again. The experience wasn't as much unpleasant as it was unfulfilling. We made up for the consumption void by purchasing 20+ bottles at various wine shops. I do think that we are going to try and manage around two bottles a week this year.

Interesting question, and I looked on Cellartracker and found out I/we consumed about 90 bottles on average per year over the last three years. That's about 2 bottles a week, which is what I thought it would be. It doesn't include daily drinkers (which I don't enter into Cellartracker) or wines we consume when on holiday (ditto).

I'm more worried about my purchasing figures than my consumption figures...

I average 2 to 2.5 bottles a week at home--two glasses of wine most evenings.

Typically, I open two bottles of wine per week: one white and one red, but on the occasion that a dessert wine is called for that will be the third bottle. Of course when the holidays come around, and with that additional guest, I open additional bottles. My annual consumption stands at about 130 bottles.

-> Pinchas

Four to eight bottles per week which includes going out to dinner. No wine on "school nights", which is twice a week.

We normally have one glass of wine with dinner each night. We eat out two or three times a week so in an average week we'd go through two and a half to three bottles at home, plus what we have at the restaurants.

This week to date (Friday) we have only opened one bottle which we nursed for a couple of nights. We intend to open only one additional bottle over the weekend. The delirium tremens haven't been as bad as I feared, and I think that the auditory hallucinations will pass soon.