Italy Kept Selling the Wine and Stopped Getting the Price

Italy sold America almost as much wine this year as last. It got paid a lot less for it.

Between January and May 2026, Italian exporters shipped 141.5 million litres of wine to the United States, down 6% from the same period a year earlier. Revenue fell far more: down 15.4%, to 709 million euros (Istat data via WineNews, 11 August 2026).

The gap is price. The average litre earned 5.57 euros over that stretch last year and 5.01 euros this year, a cut of 10%.

The euro did most of the damage

Most of that cut is the exchange rate, not a fire sale. Exporters get paid in dollars and bring the money home in euros, and the euro averaged $1.17 against the dollar in the 2026 window, versus $1.08 a year earlier. Price the same wine in dollars and it barely moved: $6.02 a litre down to $5.86.

One honest limit: this reading assumes exporters price in dollars. Where a producer sets its price in euros instead of letting the dollar float, that 10% cut is a real discount, not a currency illusion.