Italy’s Prosecco leads EU sparkling wines in 2023

Brussels — Prosecco ‘mon amour:’ the ‘Made in Italy’ sparkling wine continues to reign supreme in sales. In 2023, the European Union produced 1.496 billion liters of sparkling wine from fresh grapes. This figure represents an 8% decline compared to approximately 1.624 billion liters bottled in 2022, but Italy, France, and Germany remain at the top, Eurostat noted. In particular, Italy drove the European sparkling wine market: 638 million liters of Italian prosecco versus 312 million liters of products from ‘across the Alps’ (224 million liters of champagne and 88 million liters of sparkling wine), and 263 million liters from Germany.

Italy also leads in export volumes to third countries. In 2023, the most exported categories of sparkling wine were prosecco (44 percent of the total, totaling 266 million liters), sparkling wine from fresh grapes (17 percent, 100 million), champagne (15 percent, 91 million), cava (10 percent, 60 million), and other sparkling wines from fresh grapes with protected designations of origin (6 percent, 33 million), the European Statistical Institute continued.

Eurostat cannot help but make a few notes. The numbers for 2023 show a total export to non-EU countries of 600 million liters, which is a drop of 8 percent compared to the 649 million liters exported in 2022. “Despite the decline in 2023, export levels remained higher than those seen in previous years: 498 million liters in 2018, 528 million in 2019 and 495 million in 2020.”