More than a quarter (27%) of Italian wine sold around the world is sparkling. Demand is increasing

The hot topics discussed for some time now have all revolved around changes in consumption as well as growth, for wine, of more ready-to-drink products, therefore white wines and especially sparkling wines. Sparkling wines are drunk more and more during the meal (they also have an essential role in mixology), and are very appealing to the new generations. Plus, they are indirectly assisted by the climate becoming warmer and warmer, which often makes bubbles and white wines preferable to reds. The numbers have confirmed this trend. In the period January to April 2024, Italian sparkling wine exports, globally, reached almost 684 million euros (+11.2% in value compared to the same period in 2023), and 160.6 million liters (+14 .3% in volume compared to the first quarter of 2023). Prosecco is the leader (+11.2%) at 519 million euros, which covers a fifth of Italian wine imports in the world, demonstrating that Italian bubbles are definitely becoming the decisive driving force for the sector, and imports are growing, looking at the percentages, compared to other typologies. Analyzing the overall data, Italian wine exports at the global level (+7% in value and +5.8% in volume in the first quarter of 2023), have totaled more than 2.5 billion euros. Sparkling wine accounts for a quarter of the total (27%) in value, and more than 23% in volumes. Furthermore, almost all of Italy’s main partners are growing in terms of sparkling wine exports, as ISTAT data, analyzed by WineNews. has revealed.
Let’s start from the United States, the leading Country for Italian wine exports, at 170.2 million euros in value (+3.9%), ahead of the United Kingdom (109.3 million euros, +14.4%) and Russia, which made a sensational “jump” forward, reaching 48.7 million euros (+120.7%), taking over third place and dethroning Germany, which instead reached 46.4 million euros (+5.2 %). In the United Kingdom, almost half of the total imports(44.5%) are sparkling wines. In fifth position, then, there is France, the home of Champagne, which imported Italian sparkling wines for a total of 37.8 million euros (+6.4%), and, interestingly, the same percentage, in the negative, though, was registered on overall Italian wine imports. This data reveals the great appeal for Italian sparkling wines in France. Switzerland did well (+7.3% to 21.9 million euros), and it is another country that had a negative sign on total imports.
Austria registered an excellent performance, at 18.8 million euros in the first four months of 2024 (+21.2%), as did Canada, reaching close to 15.8 million euros (+16.9%). On the other hand, Sweden was down (-6.8%), dropping to 16.4 million euros, while instead, there are good signs in Japan (+3.7%), which registered 11.3 million euros in sparkling wine imports. The Netherlands reached double figures in terms of growth in value (+11.2%), for more than 7.6 million euros. The sore points, however, apart from Japan, come from Asia, especially China, which registered a weighty -15.8%, stopping at 3.1 million euros. South Korea, also, dropped to just below 1.8 million (- 16.8%), unlike Hong Kong (+22.2%), which is close to reaching 1.7 million euros in the first four months of 2024. So, except for few Countries, sparkling wines are growing on all the main markets, from the United States to Great Britain (where Italian bubbles maintain a strong appeal), France and Germany, where they are doing definitely better, in terms of growth rate, than still wines. It is still too early to draw definite scenarios, but the influence of sparkling wines on the global market is certainly destined to have an increasingly significant impact.