The Gallup Organization, that shadowy group that has been telling me my whole life about what is going on and expecting me to simply accept it - and usually for good reason - has released the chart above according to the Boston Globe and a bazillion other news sources. It's quite an extraordinary chart. It states that from 2005 to 2005, the three percent difference in my US cohorting cousins for beer over wine swung [Ed.: swanged?] to a whopping 20% difference.

Wow. A whopping change. A seventeen percent swing in just two years. This is huge. Quite extraordinary. So much so I can't really believe it is correct. Can't be. There would have to somehow be expressed in dip in overall wine sales and a jump in overall beer sales during that period, would it not? But wine sales were up overall in 2007 with overall beer sales climbing by a smaller rate. And the same Gallup poll shows a much smaller swing towards wine for those over 50 - but at a rate that is less than the overall wine sales increase.

Look, I am the first one to admit stats mean zippo to me but before we all start bragging up good beer based on these polling results, shouldn't there be come correlation to sales data to back it up? Otherwise isn't this just a poll about what people think they prefer as opposed to what their buying choices say they prefer? And if that is the case, why is beer 17% more important than wine, relatively speaking - and maybe 5 to 7% more important than their actual buying patterns would suggest - to folks my age in 2007 than in 2005? Help me understand.