It’s a matter that has fueled national pride and disagreement for centuries: Which country drinks the most alcohol?
Matt Stiles from The Daily Viz has created a slickly designed interactive map that details the annual per-capita alcohol consumption in liters of each country. The data was collected from a 2000 to 2016 survey by the World Health Organization. Giving an insight into what gets each nation's taste buds tingling and speech slurring, it also breaks it down into different beverage types, including beer, spirits, and wine.
So, which nation enjoys a tipple the most? Belarus appears at the top of the rankings, with each citizen consuming up to an average of 17.32 liters (3.8 gallons) of alcohol every year – 8.16 liters (1.7 gallons) of that is spirits alone. Yeesh.
This was followed by Lithuania, Czech Republic, Croatia, Austria, Portugal, France, Ireland, Estonia, and Hungary. This means the whole top 10 were all European countries. The United States came in surprisingly low at number 41.
The title for biggest beer downers goes to the Czech Republic, aka Czechia, drinking around 6.65 liters (1.46 gallons) of the foamy stuff per capita annually, and the biggest wine glugger was Portugal, drinking an average 7.45 liters (1.63 gallons) per capita annually.
On the flip side, Afghanistan, Mauritania, Kuwait, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Bangladesh ranked bottom of the list.
Head over to The Daily Viz for the full interactive map, further analysis, and a thorough interactive breakdown of the data in graph format.
Top 10 biggest drinking countries
- 1. Belarus
- 2. Lithuania
- 3. Czechia
- 4. Croatia
- 5. Austria
- 6. Portugal
- 7. France
- 8. Ireland
- 9. Estonia
- 10. Hungary