The map above was created by Bill Turrentine, a consultant to the US wine industry, and shows the global wine export routes. Germany is the biggest importing country in the world by volume, with 16% of the market, but when evaluated in terms of value it falls to number three.
The number one source of Germany’s imports is Italy, which also is a large importer of bulk wine. “Most of the wine going into Italy does not get sold in Italy, but it is packaged there and sold to other places in the EU,” Turrentine told the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in California.
Speaking about competitors to US wine producers, Turrentine noted that innovative wine marketing countries like Australia and Chile don’t try to market the same products to new markets; rather, they consider how to tailor products to meet the needs of individual markets.
“The industry as a whole has tried to find somebody to buy what we have to sell, instead of looking at the market,” Wines and Vines quoted Turrentine telling the delegates.