Italian wine production reached a value of €4.603 billion in 2025, up 3.1% from the previous year, according to the Economic Accounts of Agriculture released by Istat on June 12.
The growth story behind that figure is striking in its simplicity: it was driven almost entirely by more wine being produced, not by higher prices. Volume rose 2.9%, while the price index barely moved, up just 0.1%.
A Rare Case of Volume-Led Growth
Istat's data places wine among the few Italian agricultural products that expanded in real terms during the year. The statistics agency attributes much of the increase to central and southern Italy, along with select northern areas, though it does not break the €4.603 billion figure down region by region.
In euro terms, the increase works out to roughly €138 million over 2024's estimated €4.465 billion — a figure derived from Istat's published annual rate and necessarily approximate, since the agency rounds its variations to the nearest tenth of a percentage point. Still, the arithmetic makes clear that this was a story of more bottles and barrels, not pricier ones.
Wine's Weight in Italian Agriculture
The scale of wine's contribution to Italian farming is considerable. That €4.603 billion equals 6.5% of the €71.117 billion in total value Istat recorded across all agricultural goods and services in 2025. Narrow the lens further and wine's importance grows sharper still: it represented just over 12% of total crop production value, and more than 27% of output from woody crops specifically.
Wine also outperformed the broader category Istat labels "wine products," a grouping worth €6.328 billion in 2025 — 8.9% of total agricultural output. That wider category saw volume rise a more modest 1.6%, while prices actually fell 1.5%, leaving its overall value essentially flat, up just 0.1%.
Wine itself accounts for roughly 73% of that broader wine-products category, leaving about €1.725 billion for everything else grouped alongside it. Applying Istat's official rates, the wine-products category as a whole gained only about €6 million year-on-year, while wine alone added an estimated €138 million. That implies the remaining, non-wine portion of the category actually lost around €132 million, a drop of roughly 7% — a figure Istat does not publish directly and one that should be treated cautiously, given the rounding built into its rates.
What the Numbers Do — and Don't — Measure
Istat's 2.9% volume increase is a real-terms measure derived from volume indices, a method that strips out the effect of price changes to isolate quantity. It does not, however, translate into a specific figure in hectoliters or liters — the increase is expressed only as an index movement, not a physical volume.
The €4.603 billion figure itself also carries important caveats. Istat calculates it at basic prices — what the producer actually receives, including product subsidies and net of applicable taxes — deliberately excluding commercial and transport margins, which are accounted for separately. That means the number is not comparable to retail bottle prices, export values, or total consumer spending on Italian wine.
The underlying data comes from two Istat surveys: one tracking crop areas and production, providing provincial detail on planted area, yield per hectare, and total and harvested production; and a separate monthly survey of prices received by farmers, also broken down by province. Istat's calculation adjusts for seasonality, excludes imported product, and nets out subsidies and taxes to arrive at basic prices. The accounts also fold in certain farm-level costs — bottling, on-farm marketing, and initial packaging — meaning the €4.603 billion should be read as production value, not profit or net margin.
Drawing the Line Around "Wine"
Istat draws a careful boundary around what counts. Grape-growing and winemaking using a farm's own grapes falls under classification ATECO 01.21.00, the category captured in this report. Industrial wine production, cooperative wineries, and table or quality wines from designated regions fall instead under ATECO 11.02.10 — outside the scope of this agricultural accounting and classified instead within the beverage industry. In other words, the €4.603 billion is not the total value of all wine produced in Italy, only the portion tied directly to agricultural activity.
The Bottom Line
Italy's wine sector grew in 2025 largely because it produced more, not because it charged more — a dynamic that held even as the broader "wine products" category it sits within struggled to grow at all. With prices essentially flat and volume doing the heavy lifting, the year's gains reflect an industry expanding its output even as pricing power stayed largely in check.
Source: VinoVistara