How much wine is consumed in the city of Scottsdale per year? Neil
Answer From Expert Roger Bohmrich MW
Your question is certainly very specific! Detailed, reliable statistics in the wine industry are often challenging to find. Taxable withdrawals are accurate, but it would take some digging in the Arizona or Scottsdale city records to find the answer. There are also handbooks prepared annually by several companies, but they are expensive and do not always have all the fine details. So to try to get to an answer about wine consumption in Scottsdale, I used a number of sources. Scottsdale is part of the official Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) used for many calculations. According to U.S. government figures, this metro area consumed 13,309,800 gallons of table wine in 2011. Table wine is an official tax class and includes the large majority of all wine, but not sparkling and dessert types. That positions the Phoenix MSA as 13th in total volume among metro areas in the U.S. Then, working toward an estimate for Scottsdale, we could consider that the population of the full MSA was 4.2 million in 2010. The population of Scottsdale was recorded as 217,385 in that census. Taking the percentage Scottsdale represents of the total metro area - about 5% - and applying that share to the wine volume, we could estimate roughly that total consumption in Scottsdale is around 665,500 gallons per year. This translates to 3 gallons per person, or more applying the share only to those of legal drinking age. Of course, this understates the volume to a small degree because it does not take in sparkling or dessert wines, but it is probably in the ballpark. Then we would have to ask if Scottsdale residents like wine more - or less - than those in Phoenix, which would move the calculation up or down. It's a fun exercise...feel free to do your own research and check my arithmetic!
