Export: excellent performance but volumes remain lower than France and Spain
Italy is the queen of the production of wines and sparkling wines, but is lagging behind in export volumes. According to data presented by Ismea at Vinitaly, Italy maintains its world leadership in the production of wines and sparkling wines ahead of Spain and France with 50 million hectoliters. In the last ten years our country has increased the value of exports: +51% compared to +41% in France and +20% in Spain, demonstrating an increasingly quality-oriented composition of the offer. The Italian vineyard grows, with 674.000 hectares invested in 2021, despite two years harshly marked by the pandemic. The 2021 price trend is also good, especially for the PDO segment, which recovered at least in part the losses of 2020. But despite the production record and the new record of sales abroad with over 22 million hectoliters shipped across borders, +7.3% on 2020 and sales over 7 billion euros (+12.4%) Italy is behind Spain in terms of export volumes and very far from the 11 billion euros of French wine exports.