Distillers Country guides / Malta
Malta
A one-page guide to Malta for the spirits trade: the country, its people, its economy and how it drinks.
At a glance
- Capital
- Valletta
- Official languages
- Maltese, English
- Currency
- Euro (EUR)
- Time zone
- UTC+1 (UTC+2 summer)
- Area
- 316 km²
People
- Population
- 579,704 (2025)
- Population growth
- 1.9% a year
- Living in towns and cities
- 95.7%
- Aged under 15
- 12.9%
- Aged 65 and over
- 20.5%
- Life expectancy
- 83.0 years
Economy
- GDP
- US$27.8 billion (2025)
- GDP per person
- US$47,907 (2025)
- Economic growth
- 4.0% (2025)
- Inflation
- 2.4% (2025)
Climate
Mediterranean: mild winters and warm summers; rain falls mainly in autumn and winter. Typical highs about 15 C in January and 31 C in August (Wikipedia).
Alcohol
- Alcohol is
- Legal
- Legal drinking age
- 17 (raised from 16 in 2009, per Wikipedia Legal drinking age; wording of the source cell is ambiguous)
- Alcohol per adult a year
- 9.5 litres of pure alcohol (2019)
- What people drink
- Beer 42.0%, wine 26.3%, spirits 25.7%, other 5.9% (2019)
- Traditional drinks
- Bajtra (prickly-pear liqueur, considered Malta's national liqueur)
Sources: World Bank (population, economy and demographics), WHO Global Health Observatory (alcohol per adult and drinking mix); Simonds Farsons Cisk (Wikipedia); Cisk (Wikipedia); Legal drinking age; Malta (Wikipedia); World Bank country data; WHO Global status report on alcohol and health 2024 (via Wikipedia table); UN Comtrade public API, HS 2208; Difford's Guide - Zeppi's Bajtra liqueur. Figures are the latest each source publishes; the year is shown beside each one.