The Best-Selling Italian Wine in America is Illegal in Italy

It may seem paradoxical but one of the best-selling Italian wines in America is not officially a wine. In the United States, the largest market in the world for wine consumption, there is an impressive increase in the sale of "NoLo" wines, i.e. wines without alcohol (No alcohol) or with a low alcohol content (Low Alcohol). According to data developed by the Economic Observatory of the Italian Union, a third of Italian wines sold overseas are made up of products that are not considered wine by law in Italy. This is because in the Bel Paese a wine is a wine if it has an alcohol content between 8% and 15% by volume. Let's take a look at this strange, one-of-a-kind story together.

Italians Sell US Wine that They Don't Consider Wine

Italian wine exports are very flourishing, especially in the United States. The American market is fundamental for companies both because it is a breath of fresh air for the coffers and because even non-first choice bottles can be sold at significant prices. To give a concrete example, just look at the Instagram posts of NBA players: there are many basketball players who are passionate about wine and Italian labels are among the most popular; they show them off on social media like trophies but there are often Italian fans who point out to the stars that these are wines that cost relatively little here. The point is precisely this: in America they don't cost that cheap and are perceived as luxury wines.

However, 2023 has presented an even stranger case: in the first 9 months of the year, 906 million euros worth of Italian wines were sold on the shelves of US supermarkets. Of this (almost) billion, over 42% of the turnover concerns alcohol-free wines. In Italy, wine without alcohol cannot be sold as "wine": it is illegal to write it on the label, under penalty of withdrawal of the batches and a heavy fine for the producers. In America this problem doesn't exist and so companies make labels exclusive to the USA.

These are impressive numbers for a product that under Italian law could not even be called wine: in 2016 Italy drafted the Consolidated Law on Wine, a sort of generic "disciplinary" which obliges all companies to follow provisions to unify the production. These are "purity" rules that safeguard the product. Article 1 is a declaration of intent:

Wine, a product of the vine, the vine and the wine-growing territories, as the fruit of the work, of the combination of skills, knowledge, practices and traditions, constitutes a national cultural heritage to be protected and enhanced in terms of social and economic sustainability, productive, environmental and cultural

In this text it is also written that a product can only be called "wine" is it has an alcoholic content of at least 8 degrees. Products under this strength are not illegal in the harshest sense of the word but cannot be associated with viticulture. For this reason, in almost all cases they are not even marketed in Italy but only exported to markets where there is no "purity law".