The London-based Wine and Spirit Education Trust has just released its statistics for 2012/13, the last academic year. They are thrilled that although they were already the world's leading wine education provider, their total student numbers rose 12% last year to 48,434 in 17 languages in 62 countries.
Below is their top-10 ranking. Chief executive Ian Harris had been predicting that numbers in Hong Kong and China together would overtake the number of UK students in the last academic year and indeed this has come to pass (Correction: apparently the UK total still slightly exceeded that for Greater China). I'm rather pleased to see how many WSET students there are in France. And look how important Turkey has become. I do hope the recent crackdown on the sale of alcohol there will not suppress the rising tide of interest in wine among Turks,
WSET's TOP TEN MARKETS 2012/13
| Position | Market (last year's position) |
| 1 | UK (1) |
| 2 | China – mainland (4) |
| 3 | USA (3) |
| 4 | Hong Kong (2) |
| 5 | Canada (5) |
| 6 | Australia (7) |
| 7 | France (6) |
| 8 | South Korea (8) |
| 9 | Taiwan (-) |
| 10 | Turkey (-) |