The Millionaires’ Club, an England-based catalog that ranks brands, liquors and spirits, pinpointed Korea’s Jinro soju as the world’s best-selling brand of liquor, based on data collected in 2011.The rankings are based on yearly aggregate sales in units of nine-liter cases. In order to even make it on to the list, brands need to sell at least 1 million cases a year — no easy feat. Some 61.38 million cases of Jinro soju were sold last year, easily making it the world’s most heavily consumed brand of liquor.
And though we all like an underdog success story, believe it or not, this isn’t even Jinro soju’s inaugural or record-breaking win — it’s the untoppled eleventh. What’s more, Jinro sold 75.99 million cases in 2008. That means that based on numbers from the last few years, 2011 actually marks a new low in sales.
Jinro doesn’t publish a breakdown of percentages of consumption by country, but does say that most of its orders come from Korea (obviously), then Japan, followed by the United States/Canada and Southeast Asia. A bottle of soju costs around ₩1,450 (a little more than US$1) at convenience stores and around ₩3,500 (around US$3) at restaurants and bars.
The conclusion might be that the weaker and cheaper the alcohol, the better it sells — in Korea, anyway. That and the fact that Koreans drink a lot. Pricing aside, soju’s explosive popularity is also mind-boggling when you take the actual taste into consideration: ”Soju tastes like rubbing alcohol,” said one foreigner who declined to give his name. “I don’t know how Koreans drink it.”
Have you tried drinking soju? Tell us of your opinion about this Korean liquor!
Source: CNN Go
Image: Korea Bang
