Wine Alcohol Levels Continue To Rise

This explains so much about the behavior of those crazy winos every weekend; AFP reports that wine's alcohol levels are climbing higher than ever, and for some, it's a bit too much.

The trend of boozier wines was first reported in 2011, when the American Association of Wine Economists found that in the last two decades, drinkers have fallen in love with fruity, armoatic wines that lead to using grapes with more sugar, which then gets transformed into alcohol via fermentation. This means popular wines today might have 14 percent alcohol instead of 12 percent.

"I would stress that higher alcohol levels are never our aim, but rather the logical consequence of the way we work in the vineyards today, which has evolved considerably compared to how it was 20 or more years ago," Christian Seely, managing director of AXA Millésime's wine estates in France and Portugal, told AFP.

But of course, some wine lovers find the alcohol content to be a bit much, meaning vineyards and winemakers may have to look into a new market — mainly low-alcohol wines. According to analysts at Mintel, the low-alcohol wine market is worth $36 million, and is increasing in popularity thanks to the health concerns of ingesting too much alcohol.