In our business in Canada, our gross margins, all the money we get for every dollar of sales, is about 18ยข. If I'm a Scotch whiskey producer in the United Kingdom, my gross margin is around 32%. If I'm a bourbon producer in the United States it would be around 29%.
We're a global business. We have a unique franchise called Canadian whisky that cannot be made anywhere else. We're competing with other high-quality whiskies from around the world. When those companies go to their capex meetings, whether they're in Paris, London, or Louisville, Kentucky, their division of the Canadian companies says they would like some capital dollars to put into the Canadian whisky sector or into Wiser's Deluxe or into Crown Royal. They say it's a great product and it's done very well, but they have a fiduciary responsibility and if they invest in the Scotch or the bourbon business, the margins are a lot better than if they invest in the Canadian business. That's a real challenge.
We've been talking about the dollars that are available. When we made this request a number of years ago, we made a public commitment to turn those dollars into active support to drive the business. We have been one of the foremost advocates of the government's trade agenda, of more open trade, because 70% of what we make is exported, but you've got to have the bucks in your pockets to be able to do that. That's really the issue.
For 60 or 70 years we have been the leading-selling whisky in the United States. We have been the number one whisky In the biggest alcohol market in the world, outselling bourbon, Irish whiskey, and Scotch combined, by a wide margin. It wasn't Prohibition that made us; it was the Civil War. That's when we really made inroads into the United States. Prohibition helped a little.
Last year, for the first time in 60 years, we slipped to number two. We were neck and neck with Jack Daniel's. A big part of that, to Jack Daniel's' credit, which is the same company that owns Canadian Mist, which produces Canadian Mist in Collingwood, Ontario.... Part of the reason for that is they pumped a lot of promotional dollars into Jack Daniel's to drive that share. We are on a campaign to reclaim what I would call our natural position in the United States, of being the leading whisky that Americans turn to, but you've got to have the bucks to be able to do that.
I think, as Dan would attest, the government granted some relief to the wine industry in 2006, and that has been very advantageous to the industry. I think the industry has put those dollars to work. We've seen great growth.
We're saying we're a little different in the spirits business because unlike wine, which is very focused in the Okanagan and in the Niagara Peninsula and a few other emerging regions, our farm suppliers are spread all over the place. They're very diverse. Whether it's in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, or Quebec, you don't see.... We literally buy from everywhere. I can look around the table and say that we buy corn in your riding, we buy grain in your riding. It doesn't come to mind the same way, but we also are attached to agriculture.