German wine export remains on a high level

These figures were announced by DWI executive Monika Reule, at the occasion of the DWI Forum Export in Oppenheim. "The turnover of German wine exports altogether has risen by 43 percent since 2000", Reule announced happily. Since there are not very many wine-growing fields in Germany, the DWI claims that their main goal was not to export more wine, but to achieve more net value added.

Exports in particular in the United States experienced a very successful development up to June this year. The success of the German trend type of wine, Riesling, has contributed to this development in particular. This way, the United States has turned out to be the most important wine export market for Germany, even before Britain. With 99 million euro, a quarter of the total export turnover was achieved there. Since the year 2000, the amount of export and turnover has more than doubled in the United States. However, there has been a slowdown in export growth in the past few months. In the United States, the achieved export turnover decreased by two percent and sales by four percent in the twelve months to June 2008. This can, among other reasons, also be attributed to the strong euro.

The DWI executive is very glad in this respect that, according to latest surveys, there ar more and more young American wine lovers who find out that they love the German Riesling. "This makes us hope that we will continue to be successful on the American market."

The English market, which had been the most important market for German wine exports, is also going through a change. Since 2000, the amount of exports has dropped from 934.000 to a current 525.000 hectoliters. At the same time, the value of exported wines has decreased slightly from 88 to 83 million euro. The loss of amount there, mainly took place in the lower price segment in the last few years. In general, however, up to now sales losses have been balanced by increases in other markets and with more valuable wines.

German wine exporters have been especially successful recently for example in markets like China with an increase in sales of 53 %, also in Belgium (+32%), Switzerland (+27%), Russia (+22%) or Norway (+12%). The Japanese market is, however, still difficult to conquer; there, sales have dropped by 22 percent in the past 12 months. (aw.yoopress)