Wine, exports compared: France “ships” at 8.8 per liter, Italy at 3.6. Gap widening

Italy and France, that is, the two “superpowers” of world wine. One with its hundreds of appellations and grape varieties, one with its “few” but very large, and very famous, production territories, from Bordeaux to Burgundy, from Champagne to Provence, from the Loire to the Rhone Valley, to name the most important ones. Two countries with different characteristics and production structures, but in which wine represents, for both, a founding cultural element of national identity and territories, but also a pillar of the economy and agri-food exports. But if in 2022 for both countries export growth was around +10% in total value, looking at the numbers things are quite different, and they tell of how the scissor of the unit value per liter is getting wider and wider, to the advantage of the French, who in 2022 touched a value of 8.8 euros per liter (+16%), the highest ever, Italy, despite a slight growth in this parameter, stopped at 3.58 euros per liter. Less than half of France’s. A parallel that emerges when comparing Istat data on Italian wine exports in 2022, analyzed by WineNews, and those of the Observatorio Español del Mercado del Vino, just published on the French final balance.
This a figure that states once again how much Italy has to work to close a gap that, according to all market players now, but also critics, is now only “market”. and not quality, at all levels. With an even stronger difference if we consider the fact that both Italy, which exported a total of 7.87 billion euros of wine (+9.8%) for 21.9 million hectoliters (-0.4%), and France, which, in total, exported wine for 12.28 billion euros, with 13.9 million hectoliters (-4.5%) have suffered the same market dynamics related to inflation, high energy and raw materials prices and so on. And while moving up the average price per liter of French wine, sparkling wines, and specifically Champagne, make an important contribution, with transalpine bubbles surpassing a record 4.6 billion euros (+18.6%) for 237 million liters (+4, 7%) with an average value of 19.6 euros per liter (+13.2%), the gap in value is also clear when looking at still wines alone, which at 999.7 million liters (-2.4%) for 7.3 billion euros (+7.4%), leave France with an average price of 7.3 euros per liter (+10%).
Looking at individual markets, again, with 2.3 billion euros, the U.S. is the top market for wines from France, ahead of the U.K. with 1.5, and Germany with 859 million euros, with a podium position virtually identical in destination to that of Italian wines. Also in the top 10 among French wine markets are Japan (702 million euros), Belgium (693), China (532), Canada (520), Switzerland (513), Singapore (469), the Netherlands (464), Hong Kong (364) and Italy, with 334 million euros.