Not quite sure what to say about this other than, "Bloody Romans".
It's apparently a map of Europe's alcohol belt, showing the wine, beer and vodka belts. Can't vouch for its integrity, but it does roughly accord with my understanding of the lay of the land.
"An interesting co-explanation for the prevalence of beer in southern parts of this belt is the relatively weak cultural influence of the Roman Empire on these places. The Wine Belt indeed conforms to a large extent with the territory formerly occupied by Rome, with notable exceptions in areas with large Slavic or Germanic migration (the Balkans, southwestern Germany, northern France respectively), where beer predominates (although often overlapping with wine)."
The good news for beer is that:
There is a climatological imperative to the Vodka Belt: freezing temperatures make grape cultivation impossible (except in southernmost Russia and some areas of Ukraine). So there’s almost no overlap possible between the Vodka and Wine Belts. For cultural reasons, however, the Vodka Belt has been losing ground to the Beer Belt. Scandinavians tend to drink more beer than before (although possibly this doesn’t mean they drink less wodka). Maybe this is due to the perception of beer correlating more with ‘core European’ behaviour (as it is the preferred alcoholic beverage of Britain, Germany and other influential and centrally positioned countries). That might explain the emergence in Poland, some years ago, of a Beer-Lovers’ Party (which actually won seats in the Polish Parliament in the early 1990s). Beer has since surpassed wodka as the most consumed type of alcohol in Poland.
Let's just hope that in switching to beer the eastern Europeans don't just swap one odourless and flavourless type for another and avoid the Coronas of the world. Through the likes of Nogne O and Mikkeller, the Scandinavians are showing them great beer.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso]