Italian wine exports sprint started 2025, driven by the USA, before tariffs

Italian wine exports, as had been expected, started out the year in growth, driven by +19% in the United States, which was highly driven, because of the tariffs issue. In January 2025, Italian wine exports registered +7.5% in value (578.6 million euros) and +1.9% in volume (153.5 million liters). Sparkling wines registered 150.4 million euros, growing +5.7%, and 35.1 million liters in volume (+6.1%). These figures, just updated by the Italian statistics institute ISTAT, and analyzed by WineNews, are an encouraging sign, though we should not be thinking that market difficulties are behind us, as they follow the top record in export value achieved in 2024, at 8.1 billion euros (+5.5% compared to 2023, ed.).
Observing individual markets, growth is entirely or almost entirely attributed to the USA, which imported wine for 162.5 million euros (+19.3%), even though the increase in quantity in the United States is much smaller, at +4.1% (26.9 million liters). Germany also started growing, and registered +5.3%, and 89.1 million euros in value, and so did the United Kingdom, registering +3.7%, and 50.8 million euros. Growth in Canada was very high, registering a robust +23%, and 34 million euros. On the Old World markets, instead, Switzerland is growing slightly, at +2.5%, and 29.7 million euros, and France is showing very interesting signs of growth, at +6.1%, and 19.3 million euros. Exports to Belgium started off very well, at +13.1%, and 18 million euros. Looking to the Eastern markets, Japan started out very well this year, at 11.7 million euros (+11.3%), which, though, has been offset by yet another decline in China, at just over 6 million euros (-16.8%). Following the sensational closure in 2024 at +45.6% compared to 2023, Russia started off at a sharp decline, -53.5% in January 2025 compared to the same month in 2024, and 9.1 million euros.
All in all, 2025 has started off well, though of course, it will be scaled down when data for February, and especially March-April, come in. These are the months in which the block on imports to the US first came about, after Trump's threat of 200% tariffs, and then have restarted slowly, as the tariffs have been "frozen" at 10%, since early April. We are waiting, and hoping, that the economic situations eases up, especially on the US-EU axis, where an agreement, which is being worked on, at least in words, seems closer, according to what the US President, Donald Trump said after the meeting at the White House in Washington with the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. In the meantime, we are waiting for a real and concrete dialogue with the leaders of the European Union.