Karte des bevorzugten alkoholischen Getränks in Europa: 1990 vs. 2015

This potentially could be skewed by tourism. For example Spain has high levels of british tourists who prefer beer while the locals still drink wine. Just a thought I had, could be disproven by lack of change in France, Italy, and Portugal.

Started preferring beer over wine (according to this map): Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania

Started preferring wine over beer: North Macedonia, Sweden

Started preferring beer over spirits: Iceland and Poland (big swings), Russia, Latvia, Lithuania

Started preferring spirits over beer: Bulgaria, Slovakia, Cyprus

Started preferring spirits over wine: Armenia (big swing), Azerbaijan

Started preferring wine over spirits: [not available]

So, people in 2015: „beer > spirits > wine“

Isn’t Turkey a Muslim country where alcohol is haram?

In Serbia is beer and rakija

It basically follows the division into Germanic, Romanic and Slavic languages.

Russia … unless it’s a myth, Beer wasn’t considered an Alcoholic beverage till 2014, so that could explain the transition.

Another thing is that vodka was something incredibly cheap in the USSR, something which I think overtime became more expensive.

For Bulgaria, Beer has been engrained in the national conscience before and during the socialist era. Unlike in the USSR we didn’t have national vodka manufacturing. Let alone Rum, Whiskey, Brandy and other spirits.* Beer on the other hand, we had a lot of breweries with traditions. From the late 19th century we had significant Czech and German influence with some Czechs opening breweries. During the 60s and 70s, Beer was being a popular refreshment beverage, especially on a holiday. „Tsatsa i bira“ ([type of small] fish and beer) was a popular meal on the seaside. Shumensko, Burgasko, etc. It was also widely portrayed in movies.

Now there was a cultural shift in the 90s with popfolk (chalga) culture taking over, it became popular in „diskoteki“ to drink a lot of spirits. They were becoming cheaper too, meanwhile the local Beer varieties began having a bad fame for… well sucking, in comparison to imported ones. Bulgarian made vodka and spirits like Flirt or Savoy took some popularity, although they are not well known for being exactly good. This cultural shift persisted and… naturally overtime spirits took over as the alcohol of preference.

*Rakija, it is very common spirit, manufactured a lot in the countryside. Even during the socialist era, if you had family in the countryside there was a big chance you would have access to homebrew rakija. Obviously that isn’t included in the metrics. Also it isn’t moonshine, the technology is different. This countryside produce comes to wine too. But not beer.

Interestingly, wine overtook beer in the UK sometime in 2023 and now remains the most popular.

Beer is the better choice between meals, soft spirits are optimal for the apéro before the meal, wine is the best drink during the meal (color following the type of food), strong spirits are ideal after the meal.

That’s the dominant view in France. As most people aren’t alcoholic enough to follow the entire schedule, they mainly drink during the meal and therefore drink wine more than the rest

I doubt about the data for Spain, at least regarding the northern regions

There are areas in Castile where wine is both widely produced and consumed, such as Rioja, Burgos, Valladolid..

In other places like Asturias cider is by far the most popular drink, many older men almost use it as a substitute of water

Russia switched from vodka to beer in 2000s and it looks like it may experience another transition soon – to wine.For the full year 2024, there was a remarkable 19.3% increase in domestic wine production, pushing Russia to 11th place globally. In Q1 2025, production surged by another 12% year-on-year.