{"id":59681,"date":"2025-04-29T08:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T08:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/59681\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T08:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T08:05:09","slug":"wine-still-leads-the-way-for-eu-alcohol-exports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/59681\/","title":{"rendered":"Wine still leads the way for EU alcohol exports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, countries within the European Union exported \u20ac29.8 billion worth of alcoholic drinks to non-EU countries, with wine constituting the lion\u2019s share, according to data released by the European Commission.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"EU<\/p>\n

Wine made up the majority of the export value, constituting a 56.2% share (equal to around \u20ac16.8bn), followed by spirits\/liqueurs with 29.7% (\u20ac8.9bn) and beer at 11.5% (\u20ac3.4bn).<\/p>\n

The overall figure \u20ac29.8bn was more than 10% above the pre-pandemic level, with 2019\u2019s figure at \u20ac26.9bn.<\/p>\n

However, 2024 was a year-on-year drop compared to 2023\u2019s figure of \u20ac30bn.<\/p>\n

The breakdown of 2023\u2019s data, \u20ac17.1bn for wine, \u20ac9.1bn for spirits\/liqueurs and \u20ac3.5bn for beer, demonstrates that exports of each major beverage category lost value between 2023 and 2024. But, exports of EU-produced cider, perry, mead and sake (grouped as one category) actually rose from \u20ac472.5 million in value in 2023 to \u20ac495.9m in 2024. Likewise, the value of vermouth exports increased by \u20ac18.5m, reaching \u20ac284.3m.<\/p>\n

The French Connection<\/p>\n

The biggest exporter, responsible for a massive 40.6%, or \u20ac12.1bn, of the total export value was France \u2013 two-thirds (66.7%) of this figure was from wine sales, with most of the remainder (31.8%) being spirits\/liqueurs.<\/p>\n

Italy was in second, with 20.2% \u2013 the Apennine Peninsula\u2019s booze sales were even more dependent on wine, with the grape-based beverage constituting 81.1% of its drinks exports in 2024, a figure equal to around \u20ac4.9bn.<\/p>\n

In third was Spain (8.3%), while the Netherlands sat in fourth (7.6%). However, while wine was by far the most valuable category for most of the top exporters, for the Dutch it was beer, with the country which gave the world Heineken exporting \u20ac1.3bn-worth of it to non-EU nations in 2024.<\/p>\n

Destinations<\/p>\n

The US was firmly in first position, taking up almost a third (29.8%, \u20ac8.9bn) of EU beverage exports to non-EU countries in 2024 \u2013 the majority of this figure, some \u20ac4.9bn, was due to wine sales.<\/p>\n

In second place is the UK, which had a 16.5% share (\u20ac4.9bn), a staggering 68% of which (\u20ac3.3bn) was made up of wine.<\/p>\n

China was the third most valuable market for EU-produced booze, buying up a 5.3% share, while Canada was close in fourth with 5.2%. Behind them was Switzerland (4.7%).<\/p>\n

Of the top five extra-EU markets for alcoholic beverages, it was only in China that wine was not the most valuable category \u2013 in the People\u2019s Republic, EU-produced spirits (45%, \u20ac0.7bn) trumped wine (34%, \u20ac0.5bn).<\/p>\n

This figure is especially surprising given that Beijing\u2019s tariffs on European spirits as part of its \u201canti-dumping measures\u201d caused a 9.6% decline in the volume of Cognac exports to China<\/a>, according to data from the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac.<\/p>\n

Of course, China isn\u2019t the only troublesome market for EU-based drinks brands. US President Donald Trump\u2019s tariff war with Europe has seen the alcohol sector caught in the crossfire, even though his earlier threat of a 200% levy on EU-produced wines and spirits was not introduced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n <\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, countries within the European Union exported \u20ac29.8 billion worth of alcoholic drinks to non-EU countries, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[23341,2000,299,5187,1699,36,2199,1477,104,31086,9917],"class_list":{"0":"post-59681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-beer","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-european-union","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-italy","15":"tag-netherlands","16":"tag-spain","17":"tag-spirits","18":"tag-wine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114420221436815941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}