Imported Wine Volume, Value Plunges in 1st Half

You can't assign 100% blame (or credit, depending on your viewpoint) to President Trump's tariffs, but in the first six months, the U.S. imported 536.8 million liters of wine worth Euro 243 billion euros (about $281.25 billion) – a stunning 16.8% slide in volume and a 25.2% plunge in value. The average import price per liter also fell 10.1%.

The value of French shipments fell 25% as did Italian shipments. together, they represented 70% of the declared value of total wine shipments to the U.S. Shipments from New Zealand fell 14%, and from Spain 20.9%.

Bottled wine, which represented 70% of imports, fell 12.4% in volume to 318 million liters and 26.6% in value. The average price per bottle fell 16.2%.

Bag-in-box, however, bucked the trend: Import volume rose 49% but their value rose just 12%.

Bulk wine imports fell 36.4% to 85.9 million euros and 31.9% to 120.3 million liters in volume.

Analysis: Given that imports have declined at a double-digit pace while NIQ has been reporting an overall 3.8% decline in dollar sales and a 5.1% drop in volume for the total U.S. market, it's a fair conclusion that President Trump's tariffs are working just as he expected, at least in reducing competition within the U.S. for U.S. wines.

However, imported wine (or beer or spirits is just a small portion of the U.S. Total Alcohol market which is suffering continuing declines. Those declines cannot be explained by Trump's tariffs – although they may be explained by misleading anti-alcohol propaganda put out by the World Health Organization and the Biden Administration.