If one of the most popular slogans, in times of pandemic, is “everything will go well”, more realistically, perhaps, it is appropriate to say that, at least for now, everything has not gone badly. At least in terms of wine exports, looking at Istat data, on the first 6 months of 2020, just updated. According to the Institute, the drop as expected has arrived, but in a rather contained way for now, given that there is talk of a -3.4% in value over the same period 2019, with shipments of wine from Italy to world markets that have stopped at 2.9 billion euros. Despite a loss of -3.6%, the Veneto region confirms itself by far the locomotive of the Italian wine country, given that wine worth 1 billion euros has left the region, just over a third of the total. There was also a slight drop in the reference regions such as Piedmont (-2.1%, at 469 million euro), Tuscany (-4.2%, at 454 million euro), while, although with smaller absolute values, regions such as Sicily grew (+6.5%), Emilia-Romagna (+2.8%), Trentino Alto Adige (+1.3%), Liguria (+8.9%) and Campania (+2%), up to +71% of Basilicata (but with a value of just over 1.7 million euro), while all the other regions show a loss trend. An overall figure that, as pointed out by the most diverse analyses, to date is the result of a year’s sprint start especially in the USA and UK - on the one hand, for the fear of duties on wine that until now, at least for the Belpaese, the United States has not produced, on the other hand, for the fear of a Brexit that in its details is still being defined - whose growth has been inevitably and remodeled by the growth of the Covid-19 emergency around the world, which has severely affected the catering industry in every country. An emergency that is far from over, and which will make things complicated in the months to come.

The difficulties, also highlighted by an analysis of the Fondazione Qualivita, were found mainly in Asian markets (-21.4%), while the countries of Europe (-2.0%) and America (-1.0%) held up better. Among the main target markets, the United States recorded -1.7%, while Germany maintained stable levels (+0.3%), but followed by the United Kingdom and Switzerland had significant decreases, respectively -9.6% and -9.8%. A particularly positive trend was confirmed by France (+9.0%) - equal to +19% compared to the first half of 2018 and even +34% compared to the same period in 2017 - the Netherlands (+12.1%) and Norway (+14.8%). Among the non-EU markets, Japan (-16.5%), Russia (-11.4%) and China (-41.7%) are particularly affected, with the latter returning to cover a very small slice of Italian wine exports (1.3%). In terms of quantity, exports made in Italy in the first half of the year dropped only by -0.4% compared to the same period in 2019, which shows a general drop in average prices. In particular, in Europe and America, the quantities exported were higher than in 2019 (+1.3% and +0.4% respectively), against a slight drop in exports in value. There was also a drop in quantity for exports to Asia (-21.0%).