Europe is drinking 3x more tequila than in 2020

🥃🇪🇺 Tequila takeover: Europe's surprising thirst for Mexico's iconic spirit… read on ↓

Around the world, when people hear Mexico the first thing they think of might well be tequila—and hey, we’re not judging.

Mexico’s classic trademarked liquor has become a spectacularly massive industry for the country’s producers. North American sales are through the roof, naturally, but don’t think the appreciation stops there. Across both Latin America and the Old World, tequila exports have become a multimillion-dollar business.

And nowhere is that truer today than Europe, which imported more than $350M worth of the spirit last year, marking a triple-digit percentage increase over 2020 figures.

You might expect Spain to be the number-one national importer in Europe, given colonial and cultural ties, but you’d actually be wrong. Who is?

Well, Spain is narrowly edged out among Eurasian countries by the United Kingdom, which imported over $67M worth of tequila from Mexico last year.

Behind Europe, Asia is also on the rise, breaking $150M in import value last year. Roughly a third of all Asian tequila imports go to just one country, though, and it’s surprisingly not the one you might think (China).

Actually, Japan is the top tequila importer in Asia, with an impressive $55M of sales to the developed East Asian economy. Japan even outclasses countries with closer geographic and cultural proximity to Mexico, like France or Italy.

But don’t think that just because we’re celebrating World Tequila Day this week that we’re only looking at Mexico's classic liquor. Taken with three other major Latin American countries, we see that rum and even vodka are of big interest on Google Trends.

Interestingly, the spike you see in each of the four minicharts below – for Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru – represents a jump in interest in various alcoholic beverages around the holiday seasons. We’re not quite sure what that says about quality family time across Latin America.

In any case, it’s clear that Mexican tequila is becoming a true global treasure. We hope to see more parts of the world get on the tequila train and spice up their bars and cellars with this piece of national heritage.

This World Tequila Day, drink responsibly—and drink Latin American.