VINITALY 2007 – THE “WINE TRIANGLE”: IT STARTS IN AMERICA, PASSES THROUGH ITALY AND ARRIVES IN ENGLAND. ONE OF THE MANY ODDITIES OF THE WINE WORLD WITHIN THE LOGIC OF MODERN MARKET DYNAMICS

Tales of importation triangles between America, Italy, and Great Britain. These are the recountings of Fabio Fulvio, in his study on the movement of wine in Italy. And the “trip” that is taken by almost all wine imported from the U.S. to Italy is truly original. There are 500,000 hectoliters of wine that arrive in Italy, only to be bottled and labeled by an American company, then sent to large-scale distributors in Great Britain. A mystery? Not exactly. Italy has extra bottling capacities and the transport of wine from the U.S. costs less, in particular, taxes on bulk wine are lower than those on bottled wine.
This is one of the curiosities that was revealed in a study by Confcommercio and presented at Vinitaly 2007. The analysis explains how even Italy - world leader along with France for wine – imports its wine from abroad for production and export. And that, in the past five years, the quantity of wine arriving from outside of Italy’s borders has tripled, moving Italy up to 11th place for the world classification of most important wine importing countries.

The import total is still relatively small in respect to the total wine balance (stock, production, consumption, export), but it is growing, and with significant growth development margins. Italy primarily acquires wine from Spain (749,000 hectoliters), then the United States (529,000 hectoliters), from France (328,000 hectoliters). Table wine imports have tripled between 2001 and 2005 (with 90% in bulk form), causing the average prices of imported wines to fall by 40%.