Canada, growing market in 2020 for Italian wine, despite Covid

Steadily among the top 5-6 foreign markets for Italian wine, Canada is a mosaic of markets, some with monopolies like Ontario and Quebec, others with hybrid systems like British Columbia. An important market for Italian wine, where exports grew even in 2020, despite the difficulties of the pandemic, at least looking at the first 11 months which, according to Istat, brought Italian wineries 321 million euros, an increase of 1.3%.
Among the many Canadian districts, a particular place is reserved to Quebec, not only because it is the largest in terms of territory, and among the most populated ones (and with important cities such as Montreal), for example, but also in terms of wine consumption. Territory having a francophone majority, just like most of the country, after all, thanks to the French culture the approach to wine by consumers is pretty advanced. And if French wines dominate, the openness to the consumption of wines from the rest of the world, including Italian ones, is reflected in the varied composition of the menus of French restaurants in Quebec, analyzed by MiBD Analysis, and focused on red wines. Obviously, at the top there is France, with Bordeaux and Rhône in 90% of the lists and with Bourgogne in 84% of the cases, in front of California, and again the French territories of Beaujolais and Languedoc, present in 8 wine lists out of 10.
But Italy is also well positioned, with its classic “triptych” formed by Tuscany, Piedmont and Veneto, regions that with the great Brunello di Montalcino, Chianti Classico, Bolgheri, Nobile di Montepulciano, Chianti and Morellino, in the first case, and with the great Barolo and Barbaresco, as well as Barbera, in the second one, and with Amarone della Valpolicella and Recioto, Valpolicella and Ripasso in the third one, just to mention some of the most famous appellations, are present in more than 70% of the wine lists of Quebec’s restaurants.