ROME: Italian wine exports to the United States are at an all-time high in 2016, Italian wine producers recorded sales on the US market for €1.8 billion (+6% on a yearly basis) also thanks to a 4% increase in volumes. In particular, Prosecco saw the biggest improvement year over year while red wines posted a modest increase.
The Italian government has earmarked €20 million to promote ‘Made in Italy’ wines in the United States.
“The companies in the sector, together with the Italian Trade Agency (ITA),” commented Antonio Rallo, President of the Italian Wine Union (UIV), “started to organize a promotional strategy for wine in the USA, which will be different than in the past.
The Ministry of Economic Development launched the “Wine Committee,” composed of Undersecretary Ivan Scalfarotto and several wine-production businesspeople, who will work together with ITA’s New York branch in drafting the promotional plan. Other participants include Tuscany-based Castello Banfi’s General Manager Enrico Viglierchio, Francesca Planeta (owner of the Sicilian firm that bears her name), and Rallo.
According to Viglierchio, they will need to focus on the States where Italian wines are less well-known. This requires powerful communications operations and taking advantage of favorable prices (in comparison, for example, with French wines). Furthermore, it’s important to focus on the US’s 77 million ‘Millennials,’ who represent 35% of the population.
According to the Nomisma Wine Monitor’s analyses, the growth of Italian wines in the United States was led by Prosecco, with a 28.5% leap: without Prosecco, this growth would have been limited to +1%, the same increase recorded for red wines.
The much slower performance by red wines was influenced by Tuscan reds that, as explained by Nomisma’s agricultural director Denis Pantini (using figures through November 2016), “show a 5.5% drop in value, not due so much to a structural decrease, but rather by the unfavourable comparison with the 2015’s boom in the sales of Brunello di Montalcino (when the extraordinary 2010 vintage was sold), a performance that was not repeated last year.”
Pantini remarked upon the price gap with Italy’s most direct competitor, France: in 2016, wines from the other side of the Alps cost an average of €11.90 per bottle, compared with Italy’s €7.60. This isn’t a new problem, but one that nonetheless remains unresolved.
