The UIV Wine Observatory: main wine markets slow down in the first quarter of 2019

The first quarter of 2019, as the numbers of the Italian wine union, UIV Wine Observatory revealed and were published in the Corriere Vinicolo’s “Wine by Numbers”, draws a rather complicated map of the world wine trade, which shows a general, but not a generalized slowdown. Germany is traveling at two speeds, while Great Britain and Russia are recovering extremely well both for bottled wines and for sparkling wines, and instead the USA is still slowing down, exception made for sparkling wines, and then we come to China, which is literally, as we have written about several times, in total free fall.
Looking more into the details of the data analysis, in Germany bottled wines reached a total of 358 million euros (+ 8.5%), sparkling 68 million euros (-6.4%) and the bulk wine sector 123 million (-14.3%). Italy exported 150 million euros of bottled wines during the period in question (+ 9.9%), sparkling wines for 16.7 million euros (-7.2%) and 29 million euros of bulk wines (-22%). In Great Britain, where the debate on Brexit is still ongoing, bottled wines are worth 466 million Sterling pounds (+19.6%), sparklings 148 million pounds (+20.8%) and bulk 126 million pounds (-26.7%), while Italy shipped 75 million Sterling pounds of bottled wines (+ 22.4%), and 54 million pounds of bubbles (-8.4%). In Russia, the import value of bottled wines reached 172 million US dollars (+ 11.7%), sparklings were worth 188 million US dollars (+17.4%), and Italy was leader in both of these categories, respectively 39 million dollars (+ 5.7%) and 16.4 million dollars.
The first painful reports come from overseas, considering US imports marked a drop in bottled wines, to 1.085 billion US dollars (-4.5%) as well as in bulk, to 85 million US dollars (-6.7%), but growth was good for sparklings, to 248 million dollars (+ 7.7%). Italian wine exports stay right within the general trend, bottled wines at 352 million dollars (-4.5%) and bubbles at 105 million dollars (+9.8%). In Canada, instead, bottled wines fell to 481 million Canadian dollars (-1.1%) and sparklings to 37.4 million Canadian dollars (-4.3%), while bulk grew to 34.7 million Canadian dollars (+13.1%). Italy is in first place here at 105 million Canadian dollars of bottled wines (2.3%) and 13 million Canadian dollars (+13.9%) of sparkling wines.
The worst figure, though, comes from the Asian markets. And, first of all from China, where bottled imports collapsed to 547 million dollars (-23.1%), while sparkling wines are growing, but they are still at only 20 million dollars (+ 7.4%), while bulk wines are way down to 47.3 million dollars (-17.4%). And Italy’s race stops abruptly right here. Bottled wines buckled to 35 million dollars (-26.5%) and bubbles to 5 million dollars (-20.8%). The trend is even more extreme for Hong Kong’s wine imports, where bottled wines reached 225 million euros (31.4%) and sparkling 15 million euros (+ 8.4%), where Italy is still far behind, at just 5 million euros of bottled wines (-19%) and a ludicrous share of bubbles. Finally, Japan, which has limited its losses of bottled imports to 187 million euros (-9.4%), but on the other hand has grown in sparkling wines, to 129 million euros (+ 8.4%). Italy is stable here for bottled wines, at 31.8 million euros (+ 0.1%) but then fell on sparklings to 7.1 million euros (-13.4%).
Italy’s exports to the main world wine markets, therefore, come to a total figure of 883 million euros of bottled wines exported in the first three months of 2019 (+ 3.6%), 321 million euros of bubbles (+ 6.2%) and 74 million euros in bulk (-17.7%). It is important to analyze the data of our two main competitors. First of all, France, which in the same period shipped 1.42 billion euros of bottled wines (+ 5.6%), to the top destinations that are the USA (298 million euros, +6.6%), the UK (192 million euros, +19.1%) and Germany (101 million euros, +0.5%), and 685 million euros of bubbles (+13.9%), top goals, the USA (120 million euros) euro, + 32.6%), the UK (101 million euro, + 35.7%) and then Singapore (74.5 million euro, + 8.1%) and 53 million euro in bulk. Spain, on the other hand, stopped at 404 million euros in the bottled sector (-1.1%), shipping to its preferred destinations, the UK (53.8 million euros, +7.5%), the USA (51.6 million euros, -0.7%) and Germany (46.6 million euros, -9.3%) and in the sparkling wines sector a total of 91 million euros, to the USA (14 million euros, -8.1%), Belgium (10.5 million euros, (+9.5%) and Germany (10 million euros, -28.6%), its top destinations. The bulk sector reached 128 million euros, exported principally to France (42 million euros, -34.2%), Germany (22 million euros, -29.3%), and Portugal (14.4 million euros, +13.3%).