Sparkling wine beats Champagne, historic overtaking in the US

A new important achievement for Italian wine in what is the main foreign outlet market: the USA. In the United States, in fact, Italian sparkling wines have overtaken French ones not only in volume (a goal already achieved a few years ago) but also in value for the first time. This is revealed - on the eve of Vinitaly.Usa (Chicago, 20-21 October) - by the analysis of the UIV-Vinitaly Observatory on August SipSource data that will be presented on the occasion of the first overseas fair entirely dedicated to Made in Italy wine.

The historic overtaking, recorded through the monitoring of actual wine sales found by US distributors, marks the switch in the leadership of sparkling wines, with Italy seeing its market share rise to 35% against 31% for the transalpines and 28% for American sparkling wines.

A goal - notes the Observatory - achieved above all thanks to the unstoppable rise of Prosecco, which, not by chance, managed to catch up with and surpass Champagne for the first time (28% vs. 26% respective market shares).

The success of the appellation is reflected in the performance of the entire made-in-Italy sparkling wine typology, which in turn has overtaken white wines in the Italian wine offering. Sparkling wines now account for 37% of Italian sales in value in the US (35% in volume).

A trend that is also important for another reason: between January and August, Italian sparkling wines are the only ones to have increased sales volumes (+1.5% against an overall average of sparkling sales down 13%).