Latest evidence the party is over in China? Chinese are drinking less wine

(QZ) - These austerity-stricken years have been tough on the world’s winemakers. In the oenophile hubs of France and Italy, consumption of red wine has fallen 18% and 5.8%, respectively, since 2007.

That’s why China’s emergence as a wine-buying powerhouse has been a godsend for the industry. For each year of the last decade, Chinese wine consumption by volume surged roughly 25%, according to Vinexpo, a wine intelligence research company. (Its “China” data includes Hong Kong.)

Except, that is, last year. Chinese wine consumption dropped 2.2% annually in 2013, says Vinexpo. The main culprits? Importers cite president Xi Jinping’s anti-graft crackdown, says Vinexpo’s Anne Cusson, as well the slowing of the Chinese economy.

The crackdown theory seems to makes sense; after all, it’s done a number on the sales of Swiss watches and other fancy things. But Xi’s campaign is also the authoritarian regime equivalent of the weather phenomenon El Niño—a conveniently abstract catchall to blame for everything from weakening GDP to ebbing inflation (paywall). And a closer look at the data suggests Xi’s crackdown probably wasn’t to blame for China’s wine decline.

In 2013, Chinese consumption of domestic wines fell 4.9% from the previous year. Vinexpo said that import volumes were unaffected by that consumption slump, though it offered no data. But since imported wines make up 18.8% of the 155.4 million cases China consumed in 2013, wine imports should actually have increased in 2013—and by a healthy 12.7% to boot.