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ALCOHOL

Watch out Scotland, France may soon be ‘home of whisky’

A new study has revealed that the French are the whisky-drinking world champions and some are predicting France could overtake Scotland and become global leaders in actually making the spirit too.

Watch out Scotland, France may soon be 'home of whisky'
Photo: AFP

Paris-based consultancy firm Bonial, which carried out the study, says whisky is now so popular in France that is rapidly becoming that country’s national drink.

According to researchers, the average whisky consumption by a French adult is 2.15 litres a year – and that’s on top of all the wine, cognac and pastis they drink.

To put it in perspective, that’s 140 million litres of whisky in total, which would fill 45 olympic swimming pools.

That was enough to put France on the top of the global league table for the biggest whisky drinkers in the world.

In the US, the home of Bourbon, they only drink 1.44 litres of whisky per person each year and in Britain it's 1.25 litres per person, ever so slightly ahead of the Irish on 1.24 litres per person.

Even the French press were taken aback.

“You thought that the biggest drinkers of whisky were the Americans, the Irish or the Scottish? You are wrong. It’s….the French!” wrote Europe 1 radio.

Not only does France top the world table for whisky drinkers, but the tipple is also the most popular spirit in France, which is not short of popular spirits.

Some 38 percent of the spirits downed in France are whiskies.

Bonial pointed out that whisky is enjoyed by all social classes in France due to the relatively low prices of a bottle. While Scottish malts and blends accounted for 90 percent of the whisky drunk, the favourite brand was actually Jack Daniels.

But the French love of Scotch is burgeoning, with France the world’s biggest importer of Scotch whisky – some 200 million bottles are downed each year.

Bonial revealed more and more people are testing their taste buds on rarer and more expensive brands.

But things may change.

While French distilleries currently only produce around 700,000 bottles a year, French whisky makers are convinced that they will one day compete with Irish and Scottish brands.

Nicolas Julhès, the head of the Distillerie de Paris told The Times: “Within 15 years the world's best whiskies will be French. We will be able to stop copying the Scots and bring a real French style. We have the greatest specialists on the ageing [of alcoholic drinks] who have always worked in wine and cognac.”

So either Scotland needs to up its game or quickly learn how to make cognac.

In 2015, the regions of Alsace in the east and Brittany in the west were declared official whisky-producing areas with “Le Whisky Breton” and “Le Whisky Alsacien” being granted protected status.

Whisky is also made in the south east of the country (Tarn and Herault) and in Champagne-Ardenne, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Corsica.

 

 

 

 

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ALCOHOL

Spain has second highest rate of daily alcohol drinkers in EU 

More than one in ten Spaniards drink alcohol every day, making them the Europeans who drink most regularly after the Portuguese, new Eurostat data reveals. 

Spain has second highest rate of daily alcohol drinkers in EU 
Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP

Thirteen percent of people in Spain drink alcohol every day, a similar rate to Italy, where 12 percent enjoy a tipple on a daily basis, and only behind Portugal, where 20 percent of people have an alcoholic drink seven days a week.

That puts Spaniards above the EU average of 8.4 percent daily drinkers, data published by Eurostat in July 2021 reveals. 

This consistent alcoholic intake among Spaniards is far higher than in countries such as Sweden (1.8 percent daily drinkers), Poland (1.6 percent), Norway (1.4 percent), Estonia (1.3 percent) and Latvia (1.2 percent). 

However, the survey that looked at the frequency of alcohol consumption in people aged 15 and over shows that weekly and monthly drinking habits among Spaniards are more in line with European averages. 

A total of 22.9 percent of respondents from Spain said they drunk booze on a weekly basis, 18.3 percent every month, 12.5 percent less than once a month, and 33 percent haven’t had a drink ever or in the last year. 

Furthermore, another part of the study which looked at heavy episodic drinking found that Spaniards are the third least likely to get blind drunk, after Cypriots and Italians.

The Europeans who ingested more than 60 grammes of pure ethanol on a single occasion at least once a month in 2019 were Danes (37.8 percent), Romanians (35 percent), Luxembourgers (34.3 percent) and Germans (30.4 percent). 

The UK did not form part of the study but Ireland is included. 

Overall, Eurostat’s findings reflect how the Spanish habit of enjoying a glass of wine with a meal or a small beer (caña) outdoors with friends continues to be common daily practice, even though 13 percent does not make it prevalent. 

Spaniards’ tendency to drink in moderation also continues to prevail, even though a 2016 study by Danish pharmaceuticals company Lundbeck found that one in six people in the country still drinks too much. 

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