Lo sparkling wine records a historic overtaking on the champagne in overseas sales. With a 20% jump in the shipment of bottles abroad, Italian bubbles put the arrow and detach the sales of champagne. This is highlighted by an analysis of Coldiretti Based on Istat data on foreign trade in 2014.
Coldiretti explains that so many bottles of sparkling wine have never been requested abroad as in 2014 which ended with the shipment of more than 320 million bottles of Italian sparkling wine, the all-time record. So the situation has therefore been reversed and in the world - Coldiretti specifies - more Italian sparkling wine has been drunk than champagne whose exports stopped at 307 million bottles with a weak increase of 0,7 percent.
The joke for the precious transalpine bubbles lies in the data that shows us how France imported 2014 million bottles of Made in Italy sparkling wine in 9,8 while on the contrary only 5,8 million bottles of champagne arrived in Italy from beyond the Alps . An important result in view of theExhibition since since the beginning of the crisis in 2007 the bottles of Italian spumante shipped abroad – continues Coldiretti – have almost doubled with an increase in the presence in traditional countries but also with the conquest of new markets such as China.
But which is the most requested sparkling wine abroad? In the ranking of the favorite Italian bubbles in the world there are in order the Prosecco, Asti, Franciacorta. Of note – Coldiretti specifies – are the results obtained on new markets such as the record growth in exports to China where the bottles of Made in Italy sparkling wine consumed in 2014 almost doubled (+90 percent) compared to last year. A real sales boom in the same period was recorded in the United Kingdom (+45 per cent in quantity) which - Coldiretti continues - overtook the United States in terms of consumption (+14 per cent) and became the first reference market for tricolor bubbles while Germany drops to third place with exports remaining practically stable.
But among all these triumphant data for the sales of Italian sparkling wine abroad, Coldiretti also underlines how the imitations abroad focusing on Italian sounding. One of the laboratories of fake Italian products is even there Crimea, a peninsula that overlooks the Black Sea and where, despite the war, production has begun fake Prosecco which in disregard of the rules for the protection of denominations is sold in the large supermarket chains of Eastern Europe. But on the market – continues Coldiretti – there are also bottles of Kressecco and Meer-Secco produced in Germany which clearly recall our Prosecco.
The result of the Italian spumante abroad drives - Coldiretti claims - the entire wine sector which is classified as the main item of national agri-food exports with over half of the bottles produced in Italy consumed abroad where a record turnover of over 5 billion. What is worrying this year - concludes Coldiretti - is the collapse of national production due to bad weather which cut crops by 15 percent with the 2014 harvest which ranks as the scarcest since 1950 with 41 million hectoliters.
