This is how the minhag startd. In the late 1400’s there was a shift in the Gulfstream that caused a mini-Ice Age across Northern Europe. No icebergs but significantly colder weather that lasted nearly three hundred years. It killed off all the vineyards in England and Northern Europe, promptimg the locals to distill whatever was at hand, Russia and poland turned potatos into vodka, Germans became beer drinkers and the English ,Scots and the Irish drank whiskey.
Wine became so expensive that the Rabbanim paskined that only kiddush erev Shabbos , not the morning, required wine. The Mishna Brura discusses it.
The reason why the US has never , until recently been a big wine consumer is becuse all the early colonists and immigrants came from Northern Europe