Italian wine exports, in the first two months of 2021, lost 13.1%, to 836 million euros

Italian wine shipments are still struggling, losing 13.1% in the first two months of 2021 (compared to the same period in 2020), when the signs of the pandemic, from the East, were beginning to spread to Europe, starting right with Italy. Thus the aggregate figure for January/February stops at 836 million euros, compared to 962 million euros a year ago, as emerges from the latest update of Istat data, analyzed by WineNews.
The United States, still firmly the leading market for Italian wine exports, has lost 26.2%, dropping from 271 million euros in the first two months of 2020 to 200 million euros at the beginning of this year. The supply race of the last months is weighing heavily, slowing down purchases, but it will be necessary to understand how much the suspension of tariffs at 25% on the wines of France, Spain and Germany influences or can influence the coming months. Things are going better in Canada, where Italian wine is down 7.5%, from 51.8 million euros in the first two months of 2020 to 47.9 million euros at the beginning of 2021.
In Europe, the reference market is Germany, where the drop is similar to that recorded by Canada: -7.4%, from 165 million euros in the first two months of 2020 to 152.8 million euros in the first two years of 2021. The debacle of Great Britain continues, where restrictions imposed by Brexit narrow the path of EU imports, obviously including Italian wine, down by 27.7%, the worst figure among the main markets: from 85.6 to 62 million euros. Not even Switzerland manages to show a positive result, but limits the losses: -3.9%, from 53.5 million euros of the last year to 51.4 million euros in the first two months of 2021. France also declined, leaving 18.3% on the ground, with an absolute drop that is not so dramatic: shipment in the transalpine country went from 26.2 million euros in the first two months of 2020 to 21.4 million euros in the same period of 2021.

Scandinavian countries are also down, with Sweden going from 30 million euros of Italian wine imported in the first two months of 2020 to 25.8 million euros at the beginning of 2021 (-15.1%), and Norway losing 14.3%, down from 14.4 million euros in the first two months of 2020 to 12.3 million euros in the same period of 2021. Austria also loses something, 9.3%, with the values of Italian wine exports going from 15.3 million euros in the first two months of 2020 to 13.8 million euros in the same period of 2021. The first good news, from this tour of the main outlet markets for Italian wine, comes from Russia, where shipments increased by 7.1%, from 14.1 to 15.1 million euros.

Lastly, Asian countries, where the economy has already returned to the pre-pandemic levels, with growth rates, as in the case of South Korea and China, even higher. A rediscovered economic well-being, which is also reflected in the imports of Italian wine. The figures for China are excellent, where super tariffs on Australian wine have opened a highway to European and South American production: here, Italian production has grown by 56%, going from 11.6 million euros in the first two months of 2020 to 18.1 million euros in the first two months of 2021. Exports to South Korea have doubled (+105%), rising from 5.5 to 11.3 million euros from the first two months of 2020 to the first two months of 2021: here, it is always good to remember, the pandemic was resolved in a very short time, and closures were extremely localized. On the other hand, in Asia, Japan, records a decline, losing 15.5%: if shipments of Italian wine reached 26.5 million euros a year ago, in January and February 2021 they dropped to 22.4 million euros.