YELLOWKNIFE - People in the NWT are spending less time in bars and more time drinking expensive wines at home.

This comes from a report recently released jointly by the NWT Liquor Licensing Board and the NWT Liquor Commission.

Hay River bar sales dropped to $706,000 in 2006 from about $1.2 million in 2005 after The Zoo - one of a handful of bars in the community - shut down after 50 years. Former owner Garth Mackie stands in front of the bar during its last days. - NNSL file photo

"Licensee sales have been dropping off for a number of years now," said Kyle Reid, NWT Liquor Commission general manager. "People tend to be drinking at home more."

Reid said it's hard to pinpoint why more people are sipping a shiraz or chardonnay instead of hitting the bar.

A Worker's Compensation Board ban barring smokers from bars certainly made a difference, he said. The ban came into effect May 1, 2004.

"Most of the impact (for the bars) was up front," he said. "It changed trends in the way people drink. Smokers do it at home."

He also suggested people's attitudes towards alcohol are slowly changing.

"There's been a lot of work in Canada campaigning for social responsibility and moderation,"^ he said.

The shift is a promising sign to those in favour of restrained social drinking, he said.

"It's a pleasure to see because it ties into moderate drinking, and drinking associated with food and in a group which is where it's meant to be," said Reid.

The numbers show wine sales on the rise over the last two years. Sales of wine jumped to $4.4 million in 2006 from $3.8 million in 2004.

It's not just cheap $10-bottles people are uncorking, either.

"It's fairly high-end wine," said Reid.

Territorial bar sales have fallen to about $7.8 million in 2006 from nearly $8 million in 2005 - a drop of about 2.5 per cent.

The only communities where bar sales increased were Yellowknife and Norman Wells.

Hay River, on the other hand, saw its bar sales plummet to $706,000 in 2006 from $1.2 million in 2005, a decrease of more than 41 per cent.

This may seem like an astonishing drop at first glance. However, Ried said the closing of The Zoo in July 2005. "(The closure) impacted Hay River quite significantly."

The Zoo was a bar in Hay River's old town that served up pints for about 50 years.

Despite the numbers, it can be a different story on the bar floor.

Chad Carrington has worked as a bartender and manager in two different Hay River pubs: Homesteader's Inn and The Dog House Sports Pub.

"Is it a healthy market? Definitely," he said. "It's steady."

Carrington said he doesn't think licensed establishments are struggling with a lack of customers.

"The only suffering is in finding employees," he said.

The fact that bar sales are declining also does not mean the NWT is seeing a shift towards teetotalism, said Reid.

"Litre sales aren't dropping overall ... just a shift in the way people are consuming," he said.

Indeed, about 4.5 million litres of liquor were sold in 2006, which is 32,000 litres more than the previous year.

Though Curtis Rowe, general manager of the Ptarmigan Inn restaurant in Hay River, could not comment on drinking trends as he had only been on the job two weeks, he noticed something interesting when looking at the business' wine statistics.

"We're selling twice as much red as we are white," he said. "Glass or bottle, it's exactly twice."