EU’s imports of sparkling wine come mainly from Australia and South Africa – Eurostat
In 2017, EU countries imported 7.4 million litres of sparkling wine from non-EU countries, and about half of these imports originated from two countries: Australia (1.9 million litres, 25 per cent) and South Africa (1.7 million litres, 23 per cent).
This is according to figures released by EU stastistics agency Eurostat.
Other important countries of origin were Chile (1.1 million litres, 15 per cent), New Zealand (0.6 million litres, eight per cent), Argentina, the United States and Moldova (each 0.4 million litres, five per cent).
In 2017, 809 million litres of sparkling wine were exported by EU countries. Sixty-one per cent of these exports (494 million litres) went to other EU member states.
Italy (367 million litres of sparkling wine exported in 2017, or 45 per cent of the total EU member states exports), France (184 million litres, 23 per cent) and Spain (183 million litres, also around 23 per cent) were the main exporting EU countries. They were followed at a distance by Germany (31 million litres, four per cent) and Latvia (10 million litres, one per cent).
When exporting to non-EU countries (315 million litres in 2017), EU sparkling wine was mainly sent to the United States (127 million litres, or 40 per cent of the total extra-EU exports of sparkling wine), ahead of Russia (32 million litres, 10 per cent), Japan (26 million litres, eight per cent), Switzerland (20 million litres, six per cent), Canada (14 million litres, four per cent) and Australia (13 million litres, also about four per cent).
(Photo: Wynand van Niekerk/freeimages.com)
