Interview: Italian wine export value to hit new record high: expert

The total value of Italian wine exports was expected to hit a record high in 2015 with the help of relatively weak euro, according to Denis Pantini, head of Wine Monitor of Nomisma research institute for economy.

"After a modest growth registered in 2014, we would have expected the export value to rise by 6 percent this year," Denis Pantini told Xinhua in a recent interview.

According to Wine Monitor's new report, this would mean reaching a new record high of 5.4 billion euros (5.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2015 compared to 5.1 billion euros registered in 2014.

Sales abroad slightly decreased in volume, barely exceeding 20 million hectoliters from 20.32 million hectoliters last year.

The results would be seen as quite satisfactory overall, Pantini said.

"Such increase was mostly due to a devaluation of the euro currency against the U.S. dollar, and secondarily, the British pound," he pointed out.

This same factor helped Italian wines to be more competitive than those coming from "the other hemisphere," especially on key markets such as the United States and Britain, the expert added.

As largely expected, Italy's sparkling wines were the driving force behind this growing trend, rising by "over 10 percent in both value and volume."

Prosecco, one of the Italian sparkling wines, has been confirmed to be the most famous one among them. "Prosecco's golden moment goes on, registering new record highs in sales to Canada, the United States, Britain, Switzerland, and also Scandinavian region, especially Sweden and Norway," Pantini said.

Italian sparkling wines' good performance in 2015 quite made up for less-than-good results of Italian cask wine and a flat export trend of still wines.

The crisis involving the Russian market was hitting Italian wines hard, since the country had become a crucial partner for Italy in recent years, according to the expert.

"The Russian market had increased much in a short period of time, recently, and we were the top wine exporters there," he said.

Now, the sharp decrease would not be due to the European Union's economic sanctions on Russia (wine is not a banned product), but rather to the Russian people buying less wine overall "because of the economic situation there, and the low oil and gas prices," Pantini noted.

On the contrary, the expert said China offered a "nice surprise" in 2015. In the Chinese market, sales of foreign wines overall were likely to reach 1.8 billion euros, with a 50 percent increase compared to 2014, the report said.

This would make China the world's fourth largest wine market by value after the United States, Britain and Germany. The country had ranked sixth in 2014, behind Canada and Japan.

"The highest increase was registered in the sales of still wines, always the largest section of the Chinese market, which alone made up to 1.5 billion euros in value this year," the expert said.

Italian wines increased by some 15 percent in value, but performed much less good than major competitors, and still did not exceed 5 percent of overall sales.

France, Australia and Chile remained by far the largest wine exporters for the market of China.

"This year, we expect Italian wine exports to China to reach 90-95 million euros overall, which is still a very small portion of the 1.8 billion euros total value of the Chinese wine imports," he noted. (1 euro = 1.09 U.S. dollars) Endit