FOCUS USA – WOMEN, THE YOUNG, AND THE CULTURE OF WINE ARE THE MOTIVATING FACTORS BEHIND ITALIAN WINE’S CONTINUED SUCCESS IN THE UNITED STATES. THE WEAK DOLLAR DOESN’T STOP IMPORTS AND DEMAND AND OPPORTUNITIES ARE GROWING.

The culture of wine, competency, and culinary tradition continue to be Italian wines’ strongest allies in overcoming the impasse of the strong euro on the American market. The Vinitaly focus study dedicated to the U.S. market reveals one certainty: the maturity of Italy’s top international buyer (the U.S. has now surpassed Germany) continues to improve with the correct quality-price value of Italian wines. Italy has, in fact, made great efforts to maintain the market and attenuate the increase in value of the euro, with an average increase in costs of barely 2.19%, bringing each liter sold to a cost of just over 5 dollars.

And if the constant increase in demand by women and the so-called millennial generation (the children of the baby boomer generation who actually make up the largest percentage of wine consumers in the U.S.) is also taken into consideration, then the weak dollar becomes a lot less frightening for the Italian wine industry.

“We had already placed our bets on the U.S. market in 2002 with the Vinitaly U.S. Tour” – explained Giovanni Mantovani, the general director of Veronafiere – “because we had intuited its enormous export potential. With time, the work done together with Italian companies and institutions to promote wine and the culture of wine proved to be correct.”
The data for Italian wine exports to the U.S. demonstrate how wise it was to follow this path: about one billion 300 million dollars was earned by Italian wine on the U.S. market in 2007, almost 9.7% more than the previous year<.
These values are second only to those earned by France, and for volume, Italy is number one in the U.S., outpacing closest rivals Australia and France. Italy has also maintained its market quota at 27.5%, holding firm against encroaching countries like Spain and those from the “New World”, in particular, New Zealand and Chile.

And even the forecasts made by analysts at Vinitaly 2008 were positive. In particular, bottled wines and, above all sparkling wines (which have, for the past 3 years gained points over leader, France, and grew by 16% in 2007 alone) look promising for the upcoming year. Areas like Florida, more precisely Miami, have registered a 60% increase in sparkling wine sales, making up 8% of the entire U.S. market, which includes 1,500 importers.
This is a “hot zone” for Italian producers according to president of Buonitalia, Emilio De Piazza that also includes the booming trend in cruise tourism. “Miami is the American port for cruises that go all over the world, and it is certainly the city in Florida to start from to promote, with new formulas, our enological patrimony. For this reason, Buonitalia, in collaboration with Veronafiere and ICE of Miami, is creating a promotional project with the goal of getting our labels inserted on cruise ship wine lists”.

And Miami was, in fact, the first stop on the Vinitaly USA Tour 2008 that began this past February, the second part of which is set to start again next October, hitting Chicago, New York, and Washington.

According to experts, this process of internationalizing Italian wine in the U.S. could also represent an experience base to use for entering onto new markets. And all of this has happened, in fact, because of the events organized by Veronafiere which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Today, the internationalizing of wine markets organized with the Vinitaly World Tour include, apart from the U.S., stops in Russia, India, China, and Japan.