The State That Drinks The Most Alcohol Beat Texas By 30 Million Gallons

From Willie Nelson to Randy Rogers Band and beyond, many country artists with origins or routes in Texas have long sung about alcohol. Whether the songs are about drinking a malt beverage like beer in celebration or heartbreak, or something else, the sheer quantity of such songs has contributed to a message: Texans drink. A lot. Reality, however, is not always as the country songs may make it seem.

VinePair created graphs and visualizations for the overall amount consumed and the amount consumed per capita for each state and Washington, D.C., using 2021 data of sold or shipped spirits for each state. Using alcohol by volume values of 0.129 for wine, 0.045 for beer, and 0.411 for spirits, VinePair calculated the amount of ethanol consumed from these types of alcohol combined.

These calculations revealed that Texas consumed approximately 58.9 million gallons of ethanol in 2021. This number is thoroughly overshadowed by the 88.6 million gallons consumed by the state at the top of the list: California.

The primary reason for the large amount of alcohol consumed in California is simply that there are a lot of people living in the Golden State. With an estimated population of 39.5 million in April of 2020, it makes sense that such a great amount of alcohol was consumed in 2021. Considering California's larger population, the small country that consumes the most alcohol may have been more of a surprise.

With a handful of large universities across the state holding reputations as party schools, perhaps the sheer quantity of college students is also a contributor to the state's alcohol consumption. Meanwhile, for wine aficionados who prefer local beverages, California is the place to be. In many places, it has the ideal environment for vineyards, so there is also no shortage of options for locally-sourced alcohol, whether the vintages resemble flavors from the ancient, old, or new world,

While California certainly consumes the most alcohol overall, it is nowhere near the top when it comes to states that consume the most alcohol per capita. Compared to California's estimated 2.72 gallons of alcohol per person, New Hampshire's 4.43 at the top of the list certainly takes the cake.