In the first 7 months of 2021, Italian wine shipments are close to 4 billion euros

The cost of energy, the cost of raw materials, the millions of containers (increasingly expensive) stopped at ports around the world, political tensions between the US and China, the real effects of Brexit, with the supply chain in Great Britain threatening to collapse. There are so many unknowns that global trade, including wine, will have to reckon with in the coming months, leading economic and financial analysts to hasty downward revisions of the recovery. In the meantime, however, the latest ISTAT figures for the first 7 months of 2021, analyzed by WineNews, provide a real breath of optimism for wine exports. The recovery is solid, with a growth of +14.5% over the same period in 2020, reaching almost 4 billion euros in value: 3.98 billion euros to be precise. Better even than the first 7 months of 2019, when shipments of Italian wine abroad settled at €3.6 billion (+10.7%).

The second piece of good news, on the other hand, comes from Great Britain, which has finally closed the gap with 2020, returning in line with the figures of a year ago, but still at -9.1% over the first 7 months of 2019. For the rest, all the dynamics that we have analyzed since the beginning of the year are confirmed, from Asia, where only Japan still has something to make up for in 2019 (a record year for Italian wine in the world, and the last before the Covid-19 storm), while China and Hong Kong are finally showing some stability, and South Korea seems to have definitively freed itself as a destination that can no longer be ignored. The bulk, obviously, is represented by North America and Europe, where the historic reference markets, from the United States to Canada, from Germany to nearby Switzerland, do not stop a race that is a balm for the wineries of Italy, which, on October 17-19, will be back, in attendance at Vinitaly for a “Special Edition” that will look at both the domestic and export markets, where agro-foods as a whole, with growth in the first 7 months of 2021 of +12.1% compared to the same period in 2020, is firmly aiming at a record of 50 billion euros.

Analyzing the data for the individual markets, the ideal starting point is the geographically closest countries, i.e. Switzerland, which recorded growth of +13.1% in the first seven months of 2021 to 231.9 million euros of Italian wine imports. Staying in the Alps, Austria, on the other hand, grew by 7.2% to 62.7 million euros, while on the other side of the Alps, in France, shipments of Italian wine scored an important +17%, improving on last month's trend to 122 million euros. The growth in Germany was less sustained (+5.3%), but it is still on an unprecedented level: 642.8 million euros of imported wine in the first seven months of the year. As anticipated, Great Britain is also smiling again, returning to the exact same levels as a year ago, at 369.7 million Euros, making it the third largest destination for Italian wine production. The only discordant note came from the Scandinavian countries, which have had their own dynamic over the last two years, continuing to grow even during the lockdown months, with Norway dropping 2.1% to €64.9 million. Sweden fared better, where the synergy between Systembolaget and wine companies is increasingly fruitful: +6.3%, to €120 million.

Russia continues to run and in the first 7 months of 2021 it scored a powerful +39.5% increase to 69.7 million euros. This is a lot, but almost nothing compared to the United States, which consolidates its leadership as the first destination for Italian wine, with just over one billion euros and growth of +18.8%. Canada, on the other hand, after +10.6% in the first 7 months of 2021, comes in at 209.4 million euros. The journey of Italian wine ends, as always, in Asia, starting with China, where exports grew by 67.5% to 75.5 million euros. Even more impressive was the growth in South Korea: +138.7% to 51.2 million euros. Hong Kong, the privileged gateway to many fine wines, recorded +30.9%, to 17 million euros, with Japan still by far the leading Asian market, with 93.2 million euros of Italian wine imported in the first 7 months of 2021 (+2.5%).