Wine: the summer quarter saw a strong rebound in exports to the US (+17 per cent)

After months of decline, Italian wine exports to the US are picking up again, driving sales upwards in other countries. This result may not yet be enough to completely reverse the overall trend (the latest overall figure is from July and showed a 5.3 per cent decline in exports of Italian wine); however, it represents a clear . This was announced by the Italian Wine Union Observatory, which has reanalysed the data from the EU Commission. According to the figures released by the UIV Observatory, shipments to third-country markets in September recorded an 8 per cent increase in value.

As mentioned, the US has been at the forefront of the recovery, recording an increase in sales value of almost 17 per cent (with volumes up 6.6 per cent) in the summer quarter alone (July, August, September). This performance offers a breath of fresh air to Italian businesses, which have been under pressure for 18 months in what remains the world’s leading market for wine.

The cumulative figure for 2026 – as explained by the Uiv Observatory – thus halves the decline in US demand, which still shows a 6 per cent fall, though this is a significant improvement on the 14 per cent decline recorded in the first half of the year. Another positive development is the rise in the average price of Italian bottles, which is heading into the final quarter of the year with a substantial increase of 9.5 per cent.

This outcome is not entirely unexpected. In fact, the introduction of tariffs by President Trump in August 2025 had been preceded by a sharp surge in purchases by US buyers, who had thus stocked up their warehouses before the new tariffs came into force. This stockpiling by US importers has thus skewed (or at least influenced) the interpretation of sales figures for the coming months. Now, with this return to purchasing, it is highly likely that the stock built up in the spring and summer of 2025 has clearly been depleted.

“The figures are still provisional,” commented the president of the Italian Wine Union, Lamberto Frescobaldi, “but they are very positive, particularly as they come at the end of a nightmare summer. However, we are aware that it is too early to talk of a return to normality in the market. Compared with the third quarter of two years ago, we are in fact down by around 10 per cent, and actual consumption in the US remains negative (-5.3 per cent year-to-date for Italian wines according to SipSource, the platform that measures distributors’ sales to retail outlets). For this reason – Frescobaldi continued – the impression is that this trend, whilst certainly positive, is driven more by the need for the US trade to replenish stock than by an increase in consumption. In any case, it remains a positive sign, above all because it shows that the United States has no intention of doing without our wines, and in particular red wines, which, somewhat surprisingly, are the real stars of the summer boom with 33 per cent growth in value and a 15 per cent increase in the average price’.