Italian wine tourism and US tariffs: over €3bn for wineries, a 9.2% fall in US exports, no count of Americans

What the €3 billion measures

The figure comes from a press release issued by UniCredit on 14 April 2026 at Vinitaly in Verona. It presented what the bank and Nomisma Wine Monitor called the first report on the Italian wine tourism market, prepared with Vinitaly and the Associazione Nazionale Città del Vino. The release says wine tourism "generated over 3 billion euros" of value for wineries in 2025, equal on average to about 21% of their turnover.

That is a winery-side number. It measures what wine tourism brings in for producers, not what visitors spend in Italy on hotels, meals and transport, and not the number of people who came. The release does not define what is counted. Tastings, direct bottle sales and any lodging run by the winery are all plausible components, and none is listed.

The base is a survey of 300 wineries and 13 Consorzi di Tutela, the bodies that protect individual denominations. The release gives no fieldwork dates, weighting or method for scaling the sample to the whole sector, and links to no full report. The €3 billion is therefore an extrapolation whose method is unpublished. The release names UniCredit's media relations office as the contact.

A second version, €3.1 billion, appears in coverage that cites Città del Vino and in a statement by the Minister of Tourism published on 6 October 2026 ahead of Vinitaly USA in New York. The Ministry page carries both "over 3 billion" in its headline and "3.1 billion" in the Minister's quote. They describe the same study. The UniCredit wording, "over 3 billion", is the one to cite.

The release also profiles the visitors. It says 58% are Italian, 51% travel as couples or families and 58% are not wine experts. It describes the international share as "growing" and gives no percentage for it, and no figure for any single foreign country.

Who visits Italian wineries, and what is missing

The most detailed published picture comes from a second report, "Quando il vino incontra il turismo", by Roberta Garibaldi with SRM, the research center of the Intesa Sanpaolo group. It is based on a telephone survey of 200 wineries with tourism activities, carried out in August 2025, about visits in 2024, plus the accounts of 134 of those firms for 2019 to 2024.

The average Italian winery in that sample received about 1,000 visitors in 2024, close to the European average the report cites. Most are small: 40% received fewer than 500 visitors, 37% between 500 and 2,000, 18% between 2,000 and 5,000, and 5% more than 5,000. Wineries overseas average about 4,000 visitors each on the benchmark the authors use.

Across the sample, Italians made up about 55% of visitors, foreigners about 32% and local residents about 7%. The authors compare the foreign share with benchmarks of 41% for Europe and 43% for overseas wine regions. The report breaks foreigners down no further. The word it uses for the Americas and Australasia is "oltreoceano", overseas, and it gives no US figure.

For many producers the visitors matter more than the sales volume suggests. About half of the sampled wineries (49%) said tourism accounts for up to 30% of their profit, 33% put it between 31% and 60%, and 18% said more than 60%. None of the sampled wineries reported a loss on the activity. These are shares of profit reported by firms that chose to run tourism, so they describe that group, not every Italian producer.

National totals do not exist. ISTAT publishes no wine tourism series that we found. The legal framework sets standards without counting anyone: the 2017 budget law defined enotourism, and the ministerial decree of 12 March 2019 sets minimum requirements, such as opening at least three days a week and offering information in at least three languages, with supervision left to the regions. The decree contains no duty to report visitor numbers. A national count of wineries open to visitors, or of wine tourists, would have to be built region by region from regional lists, and we did not do that.

The Bank of Italy's international tourism survey comes closest from the visitor side, and it stops short. Its published tables for 2025 put food-and-wine holidays in a combined "other" category with green and sports holidays: 2.2 million foreign holiday travelers and €1,568 million of spending, down from 2.3 million and €1,592 million in 2024. The table has no country breakdown.

One US-specific figure does circulate. The Ministry of Tourism's 6 October 2026 statement, citing ENIT's research office working on Bank of Italy data, says 30,000 American travelers chose Italy for a food-and-wine holiday in 2025, double the previous year, and spent €42.3 million. That is about 0.7% of the 4.1 million US trips the Bank counts and about €1,410 per traveler, on our arithmetic. It cannot be checked against the Bank's published tables, which do not isolate the category, and a doubling in a sample-based estimate of a small group may reflect sampling as much as demand. It also measures trips whose main purpose was food and wine, which is narrower than Americans who visit a winery during a trip to Florence or Rome.

The US market: six numbers for one fall

The United States was Italy's largest wine export market before the tariffs, taking 24% of exports and close to €2 billion a year, according to UIV. On ISTAT's 2025 figures, Italy exported €7.78 billion of wine, 3.7% less than the €8.08 billion of 2024, and the US accounted for €1.76 billion of it. That puts the US share at 22.6% in 2025, by our arithmetic, down from about 24.0% in 2024.

At least six different figures describe the US decline, and they are often confused. They differ by period, by direction of trade and by whether the base is Italian or American customs data. Table 1 sets them out.

The calendar 2025 fall of 9.2% and the 17% fall reported in May 2026 do not conflict. The 17% covers exports to the US only, over the twelve months from April 2025, when the first 10% tariff took effect, to March 2026. Exports to the US in that window were €1.65 billion against €1.99 billion a year earlier, a loss of more than €340 million, with volumes down 9% and producers' list prices down by almost 9% on average, according to UIV. Still wines fell almost 19% to €1.05 billion and sparkling wines 14% to €588 million. The 17% is not a figure for total Italian wine exports.

The US-side figure of minus 13% for 2025 comes from American import data analyzed by Nomisma Wine Monitor and cited in the UniCredit release. A Spanish trade body, OIVE, puts US imports of Italian wine at €1,807.7 million in 2025, down 13.21%, second to France by value and first by volume. The gap between minus 9.2% and minus 13% is a gap between two customs systems, two currencies and two points of measurement. Neither is wrong, and the series should be named whenever either is quoted.

2026 has been uneven. US-bound exports fell 21% in the first quarter and 14.1% in the first half, to €849 million. Then, in July to September, they rose by almost 17% in value and 6.6% in volume on provisional figures. UIV's president, Lamberto Frescobaldi, attributed the rebound mainly to American distributors rebuilding stock, and he contrasted it with a "nightmare" summer of 2025. ISTAT's figure for all destinations from January to July 2026 was still 5.3% below a year earlier.

American consumers noticed the prices. In a Nomisma Wine Monitor survey for Federvini presented on 10 June 2026, 79% of US respondents said they had seen Italian wine prices rise by up to 20% in the previous year. Among wine buyers, as we read the deck's charts, 28% said nothing changed, 43% bought the same quantities, possibly on promotion, 21% bought less without substituting and 8% switched to other drinks. The deck does not show the sample size.

What tariff applies to Italian wine

The rate and its legal basis have changed several times since April 2025, and press coverage has not always kept up. Table 2 lists the steps with the source for each.

At 5 November 2026 the best-supported rate on Italian wine entering the US is 10%, including the existing base duty. That reading rests on a summary of the US Trade Representative's Section 301 notice, which sets EU goods at "10 percent tariffs net of MFN", and on the US Wine Trade Alliance's analysis of 27 July 2026, which said EU wine "will continue to be subject to an overall tariff of 10%" and that the burden "remains virtually unchanged".

The German trade magazine Meininger reported that the EU-US agreement entered into force on 1 July 2026, after the EU published two implementing regulations on 30 June, and referred to "the current tariff rate of 15% on European wines and spirits" running to the end of 2029. The article names no US measure levying 15% on wine after 24 July, and says the US Trade Representative was reviewing wine tariffs under Section 301. We treat the 15% as the ceiling in the framework agreement and the 10% as the rate being applied, and we flag the difference. The full Federal Register text, the EU annexes and the US tariff schedule headings for wine should be checked before anyone relies on either number commercially.

Wine has no exemption that we could find. It was left off the exemption list in the EU-US joint statement of 21 August 2025. A European Commission trade official told the European Parliament's trade committee in July 2026 that Brussels would seek exemptions for wine and spirits (Vinetur, 16 July 2026), and on 23 October 2026 France was still pressing Washington for exemptions on wine and Champagne (MLex).

The tariffs were not the only pressure. The UniCredit release also cites geopolitical tension and a weaker dollar for the 2025 export decline. The euro averaged $1.1300 in 2025 against $1.0824 in 2024 on European Central Bank reference rates, as used in our earlier American tourists analysis, so Italian wine priced in euros cost Americans more even before any duty. No source we opened separates the tariff effect from the currency effect.

American visitors moved the other way

While US wine purchases fell, US travel to Italy did not. Three official counts describe American visitors, and they measure different things.

The Bank of Italy's border survey counted 4.1 million US trips to Italy in 2025, the same as in 2024 on its rounded figures. Overnight travelers rose 11.8% to 3.6 million and spending rose 3.0% to €6,605 million, about €178 per night, with an average stay of 10.2 nights. Eurostat and ISTAT count nights in registered accommodation instead: 28.8 million nights by US residents in 2025, a figure that includes non-business private rentals for the first time and so cannot be compared with the 23.7 million of 2024. The US National Travel and Tourism Office counts US residents flying overseas: 4.2 million to Italy in 2024, second among overseas destinations after the UK, and 601,000 in the first quarter of 2026, up 6.9% on our arithmetic. These three counts should never be added or mixed.

On any of them, Americans kept coming in 2025 as US imports of Italian wine fell. That contrast is real, and it is the only thing the data support. No source links the two series. Bank of Italy spending covers lodging, food, shopping and transport inside Italy; it does not identify wine bought at wineries or bottles shipped home. Customs data record commercial shipments, not suitcases. A tourist who buys six bottles in Montalcino and a distributor who orders a container for New Jersey appear in different statistics, and only the second is counted by country.

The Bank of Italy puts US spending at €178.1 per night in 2025, second among the ten countries it names after Canada, but its tables do not break that spending down by activity. Wine export revenue fell in 2025 for reasons the UniCredit release attributes to tariffs, geopolitical tension and a weaker dollar. The wine tourism estimate is a first edition with no earlier year to compare it with. Whether American visitors changed what they spent at the cellar door is not recorded.

Where the two stories meet, and where they do not

The overlap between wine tourism and the US market rests on attitude surveys, not counts. The Ministry of Tourism's statement of 6 October 2026, citing ENIT's analysis of the UniCredit and Nomisma data, says 98% of wine tourists intend to repeat a wine trip within two or three years and 85% name Italy as a preferred destination. It does not define the population surveyed or give a sample size, so the figures cannot be read as American results.

Other numbers are less solid. A trade article attributed to the Città del Vino press office says 35% of US tourists have had at least one wine tourism experience, spending about €150 on wine and €300 on overnight stays; it names no survey or sample. An industry survey of 176 hospitality managers, reported by Vinetur in May 2026, called Americans the most profitable visitors at about €400 each. A survey by Movimento Turismo del Vino and CESEO, reported by Gambero Rosso in April 2026, said fewer than one in ten foreign arrivals visits a winery; the coverage gave no sample size. None of these is a measure of American wine tourism, and Table 3 lists them with the other claims that did not hold.

Claims we could not verify

Some of the figures attached to this subject come from a misread table, a press office or a survey with no published method. Table 3 records each claim, where it appeared and what the evidence shows.

The minus 36% shows how a figure can travel. It appears in the UniCredit release itself, in a list of exporting countries whose wine sales fell in 2025, next to the words about retaliation against tariffs. Read in context it concerns the United States as an exporter, and it says nothing about Italian wine sold in America. A reprint lifted it into a sentence about Italian exports to the US.

The regional picture

Tuscany and Piedmont are the regions most associated with wine travel, and the export data show both losing ground in 2025. UIV reported Tuscan wine exports down 2% and Piedmont's down 2.2%, against 1.2% for Veneto. These are export figures for wine made in each region, sold to all destinations. No regional wine tourism count exists to set beside them.

Tuscany's tourism data are more detailed than most and still say nothing about wineries. The region recorded 45.8 million nights in 2025 excluding private rentals, or about 55.5 million including them, as set out in our Tuscany tourism statistics. The United States was Tuscany's first foreign market by arrivals, about 1.3 million, in the regional promotion agency's provisional bulletin, which excludes rentals. No bulletin we have read splits those visitors by purpose. Our Tuscany travel guide covers Chianti, Montalcino and Montepulciano for readers planning a visit.

Piedmont has the thinnest tourism footprint of the large wine regions. It recorded 3.4 nights per resident in 2024 and 4.3 in 2025 on the two bases compared in our ranking of Italy's regions by tourist nights per resident, against 12.6 and 15.2 for Tuscany. Veneto, home to Valpolicella and Prosecco, sits at 15.1 and 15.3, driven largely by Venice, the lakes and the coast; our Verona travel guide covers the Valpolicella side. Coverage of Sicilia en Primeur (Askanews, 22 April 2026) describes Sicily's wine tourists as mainly foreign, especially from the US, Germany and the UK, without a percentage, and our Sicily tourism statistics set out what the island's own count measures. For the denominations themselves, see our guide to Italian wine regions.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers visiting Italian wineries are part of a market that runs on small producers: the average winery in the Garibaldi and SRM sample received about 1,000 visitors in 2024, and four in ten received fewer than 500. Booking ahead matters, because the 2019 decree requires only three opening days a week. The tariff affects the price of Italian wine in American stores, not the price at the cellar door; bottles carried home in personal luggage are subject to US customs allowances, which are a separate matter from the trade tariff and outside the scope of this article. Spring and autumn are when most wine regions are open and less crowded, and our Tuscany guides cover the main routes.

Tourism businesses and investors should treat the €3 billion as a survey-based estimate of winery revenue with an unpublished method, not as a market size for tours or lodging. The Garibaldi and SRM sample suggests tourism can carry a large share of profit for some producers, with 18% reporting more than 60%. The binding constraint for anyone targeting Americans is that their share of visitors is unknown. The only published US figure, 30,000 food-and-wine holiday travelers in 2025, counts trips taken mainly for food and wine and comes from unpublished processing of Bank of Italy data. Anyone assuming that American visitors will offset lost US export sales is assuming a link no source has measured. A published nationality breakdown of winery visitors, a regional register of enotourism operators with counts, or a change in the 10% tariff would each change this assessment.

Journalists and analysts can cite these figures with their scope: over €3 billion generated for wineries in 2025 (UniCredit and Nomisma, survey); Italian wine exports of €7.78 billion in 2025, down 3.7%, and €1.76 billion to the US, down 9.2% (ISTAT via UIV); minus 17% for US exports in the twelve months to March 2026; a US tariff of 10% including the base duty since 24 July 2026; 4.1 million US trips and €6,605 million of US spending in 2025 (Bank of Italy). Do not repeat minus 36% as a figure for Italian exports, the 17% as a total-export figure, the €3 billion as tourist spending, the 15 million visitors attributed to ISMEA, or any percentage of American winery visitors. The finding this article adds to our series is that Italy measures wine sold to Americans and Americans who visit, and measures neither at the winery.