Which countries export most of their wine production?

Exports are of interest to most wine-producing countries, even if only as a national revenue stream. When a country is in a good location for wine production, then that production will usually exceed local consumption. The excess can then be exported to places where wine is harder to produce.

An interesting question, then, is how much of each country’s wine production is exported. For example, it has been noted by Vinex that: despite being sixth largest producer in the European Union, Romania exports less wine than does Sweden. Clearly, exports are not a big thing for the Romanian wine industry.

The data graphed below come from the OIV database, which has collected worldwide data since 1995 (ie. the past 25 years). I have looked only at countries with (almost) complete data for both “Wine Production” and “Wine Exports” up to 2017; and I have excluded those countries where exports exceed production (ie. imports + re-exports are the dominant form of export). This results in 41 countries, 22 of which appear in the following graphs.

Of the 41 countries, one third have changed in one consistent direction through time, either increasing or decreasing their export percentage. Three other countries changed between the first and second halves of the time period.

We can start this survey by looking at the three biggest wine producers in the world (see Global wine exports). Both Spain and Italy have increased their export percentage, while France has done so to a lesser extent. Only Spain regularly exports >50% of its production these days, indicating that the locals in these places are consuming quite a lot of wine.

Next we can note three other European wine producers that have shown some increases in export percentage during the time period. Only Germany has been consistently increasing; and all three seem to have reached a plateau. Germany is, of course, also one of the world’s biggest importers of wine, especially from Italy and Spain (see Global bulk wine routes visualized), which makes its move into exporting an interesting trend (much of it going to the Netherlands, the UK and the USA). Both Germany and Portugal come close to exporting 50% of their wine production.

As noted above, Romania exports very little of its wine production (as shown in the next graph), usually only 3-4% these days. Some of the other eastern European wine producers, on the other hand, have greatly varying export percentages. Bulgaria has often exported >50% of its wine production. On the other hand, Uzbekistan had a big export boom between 2005 and 2010, and Czechia had one between 2008 and 2015. The latter has since returned to c.10% exports.

In contrast to Czechia, its former compatriot Slovakia has steadily increased its wine export percentage this century (shown in the next graph), so that it is now consistently >50%. Further south-east, Georgia has experienced a revival of its wine industry since 2007, so that it might now exceed 50% exports. Lebanon showed an increase until 2010, although it has since held steady at 20-25% exports.

The big losers in terms of wine exports have been the former big exporters to France, all located in northern Africa: Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia). Their bulk wine was used to beef-up some of the lighter French wines; and in recent decades this role has been replaced by wine from first Italy and now Spain. So, these African countries now export <3% of their wine production.

The so-called New World wine countries of the southern hemisphere have all grown their wine industries in recent decades (as shown next), and all except South Africa now export >50% of their wine production. Indeed, for Chile and New Zealand the exports sometimes reach 90% of production, which is by far the greatest in the dataset. I have looked at exports from Australia and New Zealand in more detail in previous blog posts.

Finally, we can look at those two countries with relatively large wine productions but small export percentages, and with little recent increase in that percentage: Argentina and the USA. The locals are, indeed, rather thirsty. I have also previously looked in more detail at United States wine imports and exports.

So, the answer to the question posed in the title appears to be: Australia, Chile, Georgia, New Zealand, Slovakia, and Spain, although several other wine-producing countries come close.