Men prefer beer, women love wine

WASHINGTON, United States of America – In the US, men like to drink beer, while wine is the beverage of choice for women and older adults. These were the results of a poll released Friday, August 17.

The annual Gallup poll found that, as with previous years, wine drinkers are mostly based on the East Coast while beer aficionados live in the Midwest.

Drinking is commonplace in the United States, with 2/3 (66%) of Americans saying they consume alcohol, and 44% saying they drank at least one alcoholic beverage a week.

While just 12% of drinkers told pollsters they had consumed 8 or more drinks over the past week, 22% said they sometimes have too much to drink, up from 17% last year but similar to figures in previous years over the past decade.

The proportion of excessive drinkers tended to be higher before 2001, according to Gallup.

The poll found that 39% of US drinkers most often drink beer, compared to 35% that drink wine and 22% that prefer liquor.

More than half of US women — 52% — prefer wine, compared to 20% of men, according to the poll.

Some 59% of women over the age of 50 said wine was their drink of choice, up from 28% for men in the same age group.

Overall, the poll found that beer is the preferred beverage for those between the ages of 18 and 54, while adults aged 55 and older opt for wine.

The telephone poll surveyed 1,014 adults nationwide on July 9-12, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for the the total sample of national adults, and plus or minus 5 percentage points for adult drinkers. – Agence France-Presse