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Alcohol Belts of Europe
- xanipher 7y agoMany countries even have their own internal alcohol belts. Austria has many wine growing regions where Wine dominates alcohol consumption.
- EForEndeavour 7y agoAustria's vineyards are concentrated in the eastern portion of the country, right? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_wine#Wine_regions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_wine#Wine_regions) That's wine production; is wine consumption also predominantly in the east, or do Austrians drink wine no matter where in the country they live?
- ginko 7y agoAs far as I know the most consumed alcohol in Spain is beer.
- isostatic 7y agoI suspect from the copious British immigrants more than the native population
- jxub 7y agoNot really, wine is only dominant now in the Castilla region as internal production quality improved thoughout all of Spain. Wine usually is more drunk with food, not really as a standalone drink in Spain.
- switch007 7y agoGoogle "Foreign population residing in Spain", you might find it enlightening.
- Someone 7y agoFTA: ”The alcohol belts refer to the traditional beverages of countries rather than what is most commonly drunk by the populace today”. Also, the second map, labeled ”Map of Europe with individual countries grouped by preferred type of alcoholic beverage, based on recorded alcohol per capita (age 15+) consumption (in litres of pure alcohol) in 2010” has Spain labeled “beer”.
- harperlee 7y agoIt’s right there in the second map. It is something quite recent; most probably due to the lower price of beer and less variance of quality.
- galangalalgol 7y agoOloroso muy seco para me. Does that count as wine or spirit?
- AdrianB1 7y agoIs it because one can have a cold beer as a hydration and cooling vehicle, while wine cannot fill that role?
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoThere is a tradition in Spain of cooling wine beverages in the warm months of the year: sangria where wine is mixed with fruit juice, and more recently calimocho where it is mixed with Coca-Cola.
- wtdata 7y agoYou drink green (as opposed to mature) white (grape color) wine cold, specially in the summer.
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoReminds me of the Chumbawumba song "EU has a whiskey belt, EU has a vodka belt, EU has a wine belt" EU never gonna keep me down?
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- tus88 7y agoThe two images at the top are quite dissimilar with no clear explanation why. Different years?
- scotty79 7y agoFirst map is aspirational. Second is actual.
- Tade0 7y agoI don't think many people in Poland nowadays - aside maybe from college students - aspire to be called "vodka country". My family hails from Lesser Poland and I've never seen vodka on any of the family gatherings - including weddings. It just doesn't appear to be part of the local culture. Of course the situation is very different in the eastern and north-eastern regions.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoPeculiar. I was born and still live in Lesser Poland, and throughout all my circles, beer and vodka are two staple alcoholic beverages. Especially when we talk weddings - vodka is the one mandatory drink at a wedding. Everything else is optional, but there has to be wedding vodka, and besides providing an ample supply during the event, it's customary for the newlyweds to give a bottle to each guest couple as a parting gift.
- Tade0 7y agoGuess I extrapolated too much after all. But then again both of my parents (almost) never drank vodka and they have wildly different backgrounds.
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoIf no one drinks vodka in Poland, then why does any Polish hypermarket have a huge vodka section, nearly comparable in size to the wine section? Vodka is even sold at petrol stations, and not just cheap vodka for winos, but also premium brands as apparently people pick up a bottle on the way to visit someone.
- aries1980 7y agoI disagree with Hungary is in a Wine-Beer belt. Although Beer is in par with wine, the spirits (pálinka) is very significant. In the region I born, in every household that had some fruits had the argument whether jam or spirits should be made from the fruit. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1linka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1linka https://welovebudapest.com/en/2015/02/20/19-signs-you-learned-to-drink-in-hungary/ https://welovebudapest.com/en/2015/02/20/19-signs-you-learne...
- babuskov 7y agoSerbia is also not in Wine belt. The traditional drink is rakija - which is the same as pálinka in Hungary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia The "belts" seems like made up thing, bending the actual facts to fit someone's story.
- misterkolaz 7y agoSame as Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia or anywhere albanians live. New generations will drink it less and less, and become beer countries as well
- boomboomsubban 7y agoIt says it's a fruit brandy, and traditional brandy is a spirit made by using wine. Things don't neatly separate into three groups, but it's not completely made up.
- boomskats 7y ago> It says it's a fruit brandy, and traditional brandy is a spirit made by using wine This is a really good example of bending actual facts to fit someone's story.
- boomboomsubban 7y agoBrandy is a spirit made out of wine. Fruit brandy just uses things besides grapes. It's not really vodka and it's not really wine. It's not a distortion of facts, it could fall under either designation.
- nabla9 7y agoAs said in the article, these are traditional belts. Nordic countries would be in the beer belt today, for example.
- Gwypaas 7y agoLiterally the next image shows that Nordic is not beer-belt today (well 2010) but instead split with Finland and Denmark being beer while Sweden and Norway is wine. I wonder if there's any research as to why that is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alcohol_belts_of_Europe_(actual_consumption_in_2010).svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alcohol_belts_of_Europe...
- freyr 7y ago> Finland and Denmark being beer while Sweden and Norway is wine Finland and Norway are beer, Sweden and Denmark are wine.
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- pimmen 7y agoWe don’t have any traditions associated with beer though in Sweden (where I grew up) but we have loads of traditions with schnapps. Schnapps is what we traditionally drink during Midsummer and Christmas, whether or not you drink beer or not during the rest of the holiday is a matter of taste and not tradition. Light lager and wine is the alcohol we consume recreationally on normal days.
- supermatt 7y agoThey are clearly not traditional belts. To my eye they are entirely fictional. There are no sources. Lithuania wouldn't be considered a producer of vodka historically. The "large commercial production" of vodka they mention as a factor is only 100 years old in Lithuania. Historically lithuanians would produce drink fruit and berry wines - generally from their own produce.
- bpye 7y agoThe article points out that Scotland actually falls into the spirit-drinking countries - typically whisky. Unsurprisingly this is almost entirely related to the climate of the countries and the crops that could traditionally be grown.
- mckee1 7y agoI'm not sure this is really reflected in reality, perhaps aside from the 65+ generation. I grew up in Scotland, and it was very much a beer drinking culture.
- mustacheemperor 7y agoThis is addressed in the beginning of the article, >The alcohol belts refer to the traditional beverages of countries rather than what is most commonly drunk by the populace today, as in terms of drinking habits beer has become the most popular alcoholic drink in the whole world, including various parts of the wine and vodka belts.
- opportune 7y agoOne of the things I have noticed among immigrants from Eastern Europe is that very few of them drink much, if at all. It seems to be some kind of class thing. So it’s not surprising that in some of the wealthier Eastern European countries spirits are losing favor to beer
- groundlogic 7y agoReally? I've never been as hung over as the day after I was drinking vodka with my polish counterpart software developers. Granted, they were still living in Poland, so not really immigrants, but they were probably amongst the 5-10% highest paid people in the country. (Swede here.)
- opportune 7y agoPerhaps it differs from country to country, most Eastern European immigrants I know are Jewish people who immigrated in the 90s. But most of the more recent ones are also not really drinkers
- Tade0 7y agoI can tell from experience that this may be due to them graduating from a technical university in Poland. Young men[0] around here still bond via drinking lethal amounts of vodka. I know of at least one death caused by this. [0] The gender imbalance in CS is so severe that I remember bragging to my friends how I was not only acquainted with both of the female students in our year at the Warsaw University of Technology, but also both of the ones that started studying CS in 2010 at the University of Warsaw.
- lapnitnelav 7y agoOn my first day in a new house, I was greeted with a mug of vodka by my (long time settled in Ireland) Polish housemate. Yeah, that was a tough one to swallow, literally.
- m0zg 7y agoAs an immigrant from deep inside the Vodka belt (Russia), it's not a class thing. Over there this is just how you hang out with friends, whether you like it or not. Not drinking vodka invites ridicule and jokes about you being in poor health (the only acceptable excuse to not drink vodka). Moreover, if you're a businessman, your business will often require you to get blackout drunk with partners. Like it or not, nobody gives a shit. "We drank vodka together" carries the same weight as "we broke bread together" might elsewhere as far as closeness, trust, and friendship is concerned. Here in the US I haven't had vodka in years. The US right now has such great beer that drinking any other alcoholic beverage should be illegal. Possibly the very best anywhere in the world. Not even Germany/Austria/England come anywhere close to what you can buy on the US West Coast. Even in Russia though the attitudes are changing. Anecdotally, meeting with my university friends a year ago we drank only beer, and they said they mostly drink wine (beer in Russia is pretty bad still, although the situation is improving).
- deltron3030 7y agoBeer is more common in Spain among the youth imo (own subjective experience), what's different to Germany is that young people pass litros (1l bottles) around like joints. Lips don't don't touch the bottle when you drink..
- harperlee 7y ago1 liter beer bottles are more typically (informally) called litronas ;)
- hackbinary 7y agoWell, whoever wrote this doesn't know about whisky in Scotland. :D
- aledalgrande 7y agoI don't know if it's because of the wine belt or the warmer climate, but there is definitely a difference in drinking styles between Northern and Southern Europe. While living in the Northern countries, I've seen an emphasis on the alcohol content and getting as drunk as you can, just for the goal of getting drunk. In Southern countries instead, there is more of an appreciation of what are you actually drinking, its taste and history. People still get very drink, but it's a more mellow experience, as they enjoy this dionysian rite. Did anybody else have the same experience?
- davidw 7y agoI loved this when I moved to Italy the first time. I was pretty young, but not really interested in getting drunk, like many of my peers in the US.
- aledalgrande 7y agoSaw that you lived in Padova, that's where I studied :)
- AdrianB1 7y agoMost people in Romania have a beer in the summer as a cold drink, not with the purpose of getting drunk, and wine or spirits in the winter as a social occasion for bonding, also not for getting wasted. There is no social habit here of getting wasted in the weekends and having a bad hangover on Monday morning, but most of my colleagues in Newcastle (UK) do that. Huge difference.
- exlurker 7y agoYes, generally speaking, the northern countries have had very strict restrictions on alcohol, which somehow developed an unhealthy attitude in that, once your job is over on friday, get as drunk as fast as possible, preferably until sunday. But it's changing - now there's an appreciation of the taste of good wines, craft beers and liquors during the week, although still going hardcore during the weekend. I don't know if it's for the better, but it's changing.
- ratmice 7y agoA bit weird, the article refers to "traditional beverages of countries rather than what is most commonly drunk by the populace today", but then uses images compiled from modern consumption data. "consumption (in litres of pure alcohol) in 2010". Traditional consumption largely follows from soil, and weather, affecting what grows. A less generalized article would be cool, showing cider regions in Germany, France and England as well as wine regions in Germany. I don't think the generalization to whole countries suits the purported goal of traditional beverages well, nor does the classification of cider as a wine analogue.
- alangibson 7y agoThis makes the common mistake of taking country as the unit of analysis. Like just about everywhere on Earth, European countries are too regional to generalize. In Southern Austria, it's beer and schnapps, with a healthy dose of either white or red wine depending on what's best grown locally.
- nabdab 7y agoThe only country which for some reason got classified in two belts also happens to be one of the happiest countries in the world, Denmark.
- ajuc 7y agoPoland is in beer and vodka belts?
- TrackerFF 7y agoNorwegian here: Even though we have a long history of moonshine, especially in the rural areas, we are most def. a beer-drinking country. If anything, our taste of alcohol is more diverse than ever before, simply because there are more options. When I grew up, people either drank beer or moonshine, because that's the only things we had available in my small village. Then the (state owned) alcohol store arrived, and moonshine completely disappeared. I remember the first time I visited Russia, in the 90s, and was set back by the sheer amount of Vodka the Russians drank. Went to a party, and couldn't find a single beer. They were all drinking straight vodka. But IIRC, they've now been "westernized" on that front, and drink much more beer.
- aj7 7y agoVodka is the aunt of wine.
- fian 7y agoThis made me wonder what alcoholic beverages the vodka belt countries drank before the arrival of the potato from South America in the late 1500's. Seems it was mostly beer and mead: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2e1rav/what_did_russians_drink_before_the_introduction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2e1rav/what_... Interesting that the introduction of a single plant could have such an impact on cultural norms.
- qubex 7y agoThis is exactly the question that came to my mind (and that comes to my mind whenever I hear ‘potatoes’, ‘tomatoes’, or other New World imports mentioned as ‘tradition’ of some European country). For example: I come from Italy. The number of times I’ve heard/read stuff about the supposed benefits of the “Mediterranean diet” being “recognised as far back as the Ancient Romans” and featuring some photograph of a platter involving fish and tomatoes... it just makes me want to flip. When I saw sliced tomatoes on the table in the film The Gladiator it made me want to walk out of the cinema.
- Fins 7y agoI think most Russians, when they get traditional, would scoff at the idea of potato vodka, equating it with something made from wood pulp. Distilling grain spirits was quite possible before potatoes were introduced.
- flurdy 7y agoMy take on this map is perhaps easier to judge by what is acceptable and common to have at lunch when at work or with family. Would a glass of wine at lunch seem odd? Would a beer with your lunchtime burger seem out of place? Would a glass or two of vodka between colleagues be quite normal? In that case, I suspect some countries would be more "prude belt"...
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- martythemaniak 7y agoHere is a light-hearted look at all the European belts, including the alcohol one. https://atlasofprejudice.com/tearing-europe-apart-10d01e876eab https://atlasofprejudice.com/tearing-europe-apart-10d01e876e...
- supermatt 7y agoI wouldn't be surprised if this was the source for the "historic" map, which to my eyes is entirely fictional and full of prejudice. In Lithuania, we historically have a culture of fruit (and berry) wines, but have been lumped into the "vodka belt".
- mantas 7y agoAnd beer has historical presence too. Vodka wasn't a big thing till 19th century when Russian empire came.
- GuB-42 7y agoI have a feeling that beer is overtaking every other alcoholic beverage in popularity everywhere. I live in southeastern France. Definitely wine country, lots of reasonably priced, good quality wine is produced here. And while wine is still very popular, a lot of younger people now drink beer. For taste, we have a lot of craft beer shops popping off. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, high alcohol beer is replacing red wine as a cheap way of getting drunk. It is a trend I trend to see everywhere I go. Interestingly, in France, it looks like rosé wine is making a comeback with women.
- ur-whale 7y agoIs there some sort of point to this classification ?
- odiroot 7y agoI'm a bit sad our vodka culture in Poland is dying. A lot of people just replace it with drinking beer, usually cheap and terrible. That doesn't necessary mean that heavy drinkers suddenly drink less alcohol (as some vodka-opponents would claim). They just drink longer/faster to ingest the same amount of pure alcohol in the night.
- michalu 7y agoIt's not clear what was the method to measure this. The article mentions "preferred alcohol," "drinking," "drinking pattern" and "production." This can be misleading as many comments state below. For example, Romania is a big wine producer, it's most known for wine, but a lot of that wine goes for export. For drinking, a one liter of vodka equals four liters of wine in terms of alcohol content. So a country that drinks 1.5x more wine in quantity over vodka isn't necessarily getting drunk on wine, because you may order a couple glasses of 2dl wine but hit 6 vodka shots of 0.5dl each so basically your main drink of the night was spirit even though quantity-wise you consumed more wine. Often times, in central eastern Europe, you order beer which is half a liter but you get several shots with it. For preferred alcohol, it's kind of like when you ask people if they prefer theatre to cinema, most will answer theatre even though they'll only go to cinema. Or ask them if they prefer to read Economist or Buzzfeed. Nobody ever answers Buzzfeed, yet it is one of the most read media in the world. So ask me if I prefer beer or wine, I'll say wine because I do. But when I go out I'll have a beer because it's cheaper allows me to sit in the pub much longer without getting drunk too fast and everyone else drinks it too. This is hard to measure. But overall for main countries like Spain, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Russia etc. it's seems to be correct. The correct way to measure this, in my opinion would be to measure which beverage delivers the most alcohol content for the said population for that will be its preferred alcoholic beverage.
- jasoneckert 7y agoAfter searching for "Alcohol Belts of North America" unsuccessfully, I'm wondering if there really isn't a trend in North America (perhaps a bit of everything, everywhere?).