Swiss alcohol consumption hits 70-year low

Just a drop, please! Keystone

The average Swiss drank 7.9 litres of pure alcohol last year, down from 8.1 litres in 2014 and 2015. That’s the lowest figure in over 70 years, reported the Swiss Alcohol Board on Thursday.

About half of the pure alcohol that people consume – about 3.7 litres per year – comes from wine. The rest comes from beer (2.6 litres), and spirits (1.5 litres). A mere decilitre comes from fruit wine.

However, the less alcoholic beer remains more popular than wine as a beverage, although people are drinking less of that as well: 54.9 litres of beer were consumed per person per year compared with 55.8 litres in 2015. The figures for wine were 33.8 litres (2016) and 35.3 (2015). Spirit consumption dropped from 3.7 to 3.6 litres.

Some 80% of spirits consumed in Switzerland are imported, but the number of Swiss breweries is on the rise – from 623 in 2015 up to 753 in 2016.

Exports of Swiss cherry schnapps – kirsch – have been rising steadily over the past eight years. In 2016 their exports jumped by 65%.

More statistics can be found in the alcohol board’s latest brochureExternal link (in French, Italian and German).