Italian sparkling wine towards 1 billion bottles produced in the next three years

The Italian sparkling wine industry is on its way to reach 1 billion bottles within the next three years, which is 33% more than the current national production of 750 million bottles: this is the message launched today at the conference organized by “Il Corriere Vinicolo”, the weekly magazine of Unione Italiana Vini (UIV) at “Spumantitalia”, the Festival of Sparkling Wines held in Garda. Further growth is considered an attainable goal provided that, as explained by Professor Attilio Scienza, one of the world’s leading experts in viticulture, “the identity of the territories is safeguarded, in compliance with the regulations and the different varieties, because not all vines have a vocation for bubbles”.
According to the focus of UIV Wine Observatory, sparkling wines represent almost 1/4 of the value of wine exports made in Italy, for a counter value of about 1.5 billion euros in 2020, 69% of which thanks to the “Prosecco system”. The average annual growth in the last 5 years exceeds 8% in value, despite a negative variation in 2020 (-7%). At worldwide level 1/3 of bubbles sold are Prosecco, followed by Cava (14% of volumes), Champagne (11%) and Asti. Of the current 751 million bottles produced throughout Italy in 2020, 83% are Doc or Docg, while 6% are Igt.
And if, according to producer Gianluca Bisol, “today Prosecco has become synonymous with Italian sparkling wine on international markets”, for the deputy director of the Prosecco Consortium, Andrea Battistella, “the need to characterize Italian bubbles is felt even in an area as broad as ours, so by next year the project for zoning our DOC will give its first results”.
In the meantime, the export locomotive of Italian sparkling wines, after a slowdown like a lockdown, is going back to traveling stronger than before, and this is also confirmed by the vice-president of the Consortium of Asti Spumante and Moscato d’Asti, Stefano Ricagno: “Asti has been the forerunner of Italian sparkling wines and today it is living a lucky period, also thanks to the opening to new types of sparkling wines in the last specifications”.