MONTREAL - Quebecers once again drank more wine last year, much to the delight of the provincial liquor authority SAQ, which has announced a yearly profit of $1.03 billion, an increase of 3.1 percent from one year earlier.
Overall sales at the provincially-run liquor stores were up 2.5 percent, to reach $2.907.
Unusually, however, the year prior was counted as a 53-week period, taking that into account would mean that this year's sales growth was an even more impressive 4.1 percent.
Expenses were up by 2.5 percent as well, to reach $522.4 million.
Quebecers bought 157.3 million litres of wine in 2012-13, 2.7 percent more than one year earlier, as wine purchases represented 83.5 percent of all sales.
The sale of spirits was also up 1.9 percent to $633.8 million, which suggests that consumers were paying more for hard liquor, because volume of sales was only up 0.9 percent.
Beer sales were down once again, this time by 0.6 percent to $90.1 million.
