Wine: With tariffs, war, and logistics in decline, is Italian wine at risk of default?

According to the report, the United States is at the center of this decline due to tariffs, with a 2.6% decrease in volume and 6.2% in value compared to the previous year. But even looking east, the situation isn't improving, with China seeing a decline in value of Italian wine by over 15%, and Japan reducing purchases by 2.2% in volume and 1.7% in value. In Europe, the United Kingdom, Italy's second-largest market, saw total imports decline by approximately 6% in both volume and value, and Switzerland also saw Italian exports decline by approximately 6% in value. Brazil, on the other hand, saw exports grow by 3.5% in volume and 1.9% in value, as did South Korea, where imports grew by 5.3%.

"This new war, which is spreading throughout the Middle East and beyond, represents a further aggravating factor not only for wine exports but for Made in Italy in general ," explains winemaker Cusumano . " If tariffs and price increases have caused a significant slowdown, now the threat is the interruption of supply chains, specifically in terms of logistics and transportation. International corridors, due to the war, are significantly narrowing, with the availability of operating carriers dramatically reduced to the real, even minimal, need, which will translate into transportation costs, where possible, much more expensive and therefore uneconomical. On the other hand, let's also ask ourselves what we should do, already in 2026, with the harvest effectively upon us (end of August), with the probable surpluses due to the sharp slowdown not so much in foreign demand, which remains, but in the possibility of satisfying it logistically. And if we winemakers, for certain types of wine, are slightly lucky since It will age, I wonder what the impact will be on the entire Italian food and wine sector."

Matteo Lunelli , CEO of the Lunelli group and CEO and president of Ferrari Trento, also agrees with Diego Cusumano . "The war," the producer claims, " will certainly have repercussions on the economy as well: it will cause problems in transportation because it compromises strategic routes, it undermines consumer confidence, it will raise energy costs and it will also affect the Middle East and the Emirates, which is a rapidly growing market and also important in general for Italian wine and Made in Italy products."

Confirmation of the surplus also comes from Lamberto Frescobaldi , president of the Italian Wine Union, who already raised the alarm last July : "We have over 40 million hectoliters of wine in storage, and if the next harvest—or rather, the upcoming one, the UIV president explained—is average with around 50 million hectoliters, we will have approximately 90 million hectoliters of product available by the end of the year. A monstrous supply that risks depressing prices. There's really nothing to celebrate."