Correction: Beer trumps wine, at least according to Gallup poll
There comes a time when all you can say is…Well, something that cannot be printed in a family blog. Unfortunately, this is one of those times.
Lager Heads has to apologize for a stupid error. We apparently misread the Gallup press release on which we based the story below. After a hasty reading of an e-mail from Gallup, we inadvertently clicked on the wrong link and did not notice that the press release was issued in July of 2008.
Yikes. Sorry about that, Gallup! We certainly try to be more timely than a year late. We have since found the 2009 press release, and will be working on a new, improved, (hopefully) more relevant post.
(Previous story is below)
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A new study from Gallup pollsters has some very interesting tidbits about the competition between beer and wine for the affections of U.S. drinkers. Most recent score: Beer 1, wine 0.
According to Gallup, “beer has regained a comfortable margin over wine when U.S. drinkers are asked to name which alcoholic beverage they most often drink.” (The preferences are 42 percent for beer, 31 percent for wine and 23 percent for liquor.)
Why is that interesting? Because in recent years, wine had narrowed the gap. Wine actually pulled ahead slightly ahead of beer in 2005. Now, beer appears to be back. For the first time since 2002, beer enjoys a double-digit advantage over wine.
Beer still is not as widely preferred today as it was in the early 1990s, when close to half of Americans said it was their alcoholic drink of choice. Preferences for wine have fallen back from their 2005 high (39 percent) to 31 percent.
The shift back to beer from wine in recent years has occurred mostly among Americans between the ages of 30 and 49. The data points come from a recent telephone survey of about 1,000 Americans aged 18 or older.
It appears that the the beer industry may have delivered on its goal of raising the sophistication of its product and blunting wine’s incursions? If that’s the case, Anheuser-Busch and its “Here’s to Beer” campaign probably deserves a good deal of credit.
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Jeremiah McWilliams is a native Virginian who came to the Post-Dispatch in early 2007 to cover beer and other consumer products. He previously covered manufacturing for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Va. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University. 
telephone surveys need to go the way of the Dodo. Half the people I know, between 25-35, don’t even have home phones. Phone survey’s continue to miss an ever growing demographic, and their results are likely skewed, because of it.