US men prefer beer, women love wine

U.S. men like to drink beer, though wine is the beverage of choice for women and older adults, a poll showed Friday. The annual Gallup poll found that, as with previous years, wine drinkers are mostly based on the East Coast while beer aficionados live in the Midwest. Drinking is commonplace in the United States, with two thirds (66 percent) of Americans saying they consume alcohol, and 44 percent saying they drank at least one alcoholic beverage a week. While just 12 percent of drinkers told pollsters they had consumed eight or more drinks over the past week, 22 percent said they sometimes have too much to drink, up from 17 percent last year but similar to figures in previous years over the past decade. The proportion of excessive drinkers tended to be higher before 2001, according to Gallup. The poll found that 39 percent of U.S. drinkers most often drink beer, compared to 35 percent that drink wine and 22 percent that prefer liquor. More than half of U.S. women -- 52 percent -- prefer wine, compared to 20 percent of men, according to the poll. Some 59 percent of women over the age of 50 said wine was their drink of choice, up from 28 percent for men in the same age group. Overall, the poll found that beer is the preferred beverage for those between the ages of 18 and 54, while adults aged 55 and older opt for wine. The telephone poll surveyed 1,014 adults nationwide July 9-12, with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points for the total sample of national adults, and plus or minus five percentage points for adult drinkers.