Hold the Chianti: Tariff threat leaves Italian bottles grounded

Montalcino, Italy -- All it took was an all-caps social media threat by President Donald Trump to impose a 200 per cent tariff on European wine for the shipments of many Brunellos, Chiantis and proseccos to come to a shuddering halt.

In Tuscany, Italy's most famous wine-exporting region, thousands of bottles meant for American tables are stranded in the wineries' chilly cellars or in storage rooms in Livorno, the port city from which they were to depart.

"Everything is stopped," said Tiziana Mazzetti, the sales and marketing manager of the Old Cellar, a winery in the Tuscan town of Montepulciano, as she stood among boxes of wine bottles that were supposed to leave this month for the United States. "The damage is already here."

So far, Trump's threat remains just that. But it has been enough for jittery US importers to pause orders rather than potentially pay tariffs that could make the wine unaffordable for some and just not worth it for others. If the tariffs were to be imposed -- and passed on to consumers in full -- a $20 bottle would suddenly cost $60.

Together with France and Spain, Italy is among the most exposed in Europe to American tariffs on wine, and many say a 200 per cent tariff would be devastating. For nearly 15 years, the United States has been Italy's biggest export market for wines. About a quarter of Italy's wine exports, or about $2 billion worth, get shipped to America each year.

Across Tuscany's rolling hills, with its olive groves and cypress-lined country roads, that relationship feels especially tight.

For decades, wine importers speaking Tuscan-inflected, American-accented Italian have flocked to Tuscany, taking back bottles of its famous Chiantis and Brunellos to the tables of US homes and restaurants. American wine lovers come in droves to the region -- second only to Veneto for its wine exports -- and Tuscan wine shops post signs that read, "USA+Europe free shipping."

Perhaps not for much longer.

Giancarlo Pacenti, whose winery is on the slopes of the medieval hilltop town of Montalcino, sat beside prizes he received from American wine magazines for his Brunellos as he described his fears for the future.

Pacenti, who inherited his father's winery, visits the United States several times a year. He has exported his wine -- made from Sangiovese grapes and aged in barrels of French oak -- across the Atlantic since the mid-1990s. Strong American demand helped grow his business, he said, and he now sells nearly 40% of his wine to importers in the United States.

But now, the importers are telling him to pause further shipments.

"A pillar is crumbling," he said. "We would have never expected that we would find a closed door where we always had absolute freedom."

Some producers said the threat of tariffs added to other recent woes, including the rise of nonalcoholic wines, beers and spirits.

On the other side of the ocean, importers said the uncertainty caused by the escalating global trade war was forcing them to take a break as shipments, which travel by sea, could arrive at customs after tariffs go into effect.

"The tariffs could be 200%," said Brian Larky, an American importer of Pacenti's wines, who is based in Napa Valley, in California. "That's enough to stop you in your tracks."

Importers, who are responsible for paying the tariffs, could pass the cost to customers, but it would no doubt reduce sales. They could also absorb the cost of the tariffs, erasing their profits, or request that producers bear some of the burden, hitting their earnings. But with a 200% tariff, "we'd all end up jobless," said Mazzetti, from the Montepulciano winery.

Trump announced his intention of imposing the crushing tariffs on European wine and Champagne on Truth Social on March 13. It was part of a tit-for-tat trade fight with the European Union that started with a batch of Trump-imposed tariffs. The bloc responded with what Trump called a "nasty" 50% tariff on American whiskey, which led him to issue his threat against "all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES" if the whiskey tariff were not removed.

The European Union has since said it would delay that tariff to give officials more time to strike a deal with the Trump administration.

Trump said that the tariffs on European alcoholic products "will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the US." But it might not be that simple: For most US wine producers, sales rely on small businesses -- distributors, retailers and restaurateurs -- that also depend partly on the sales of European wines.

"Those Italian wines are needed in Italian restaurants," said Larky, who imports nearly 5 million bottles of Italian wine into the United States every year. "People are not going to substitute wines from la Loire, from Chablis, or from Tuscany -- a Brunello or Barolo -- with some wine from Chile."

As they strolled this past week around Montalcino, which overlooks a valley of vineyards, some American tourists agreed.

"It would be a huge loss," said Dave Whitmer, 74, a retired physician from Sonoma, California, who says he prefers Italian and French wines to the homegrown variety. "I grew up drinking American wine," he said. "But I grew up."

Other American tourists said they had ordered hundreds of bottles of wine from local wineries during their vacation to stock up before any tariffs came into effect.

"I told them to ship them right away," said Jennifer Mangusson, 48, from Idaho.

While some producers had initially rushed to stack American warehouses with bottles before the tariffs came into effect, they say that window has mostly closed.

"Our biggest clients have already sent letters to Italian producers telling them to hold off," said Lamberto Frescobaldi, the president of the Italian Wine Union, the country's largest winemakers' association. "With this uncertainty, we can't afford to bottle and ship."

The Bourgogne Wine Board, a trade association that promotes Burgundy wines in France, and the Spanish wine association also said they were seeing a similar trend, with importers putting some shipments on hold.

Ben Grossberg, who imports Portuguese wine into the United States, said that he canceled his last container 15 minutes before it departed from the warehouse in Portugal. "The risk of putting wine on the water is too great," he said.

Some importers with a higher tolerance for risk have still been placing orders, but Frescobaldi said that if the tariffs were to actually come into effect, "it would be a deadly blow" for the industry.

"The American market," he said, "is irreplaceable."

Tuscans still expressed hope that the European Union could somehow persuade Trump to back off. But even if the trade battle cools, many in Tuscany and elsewhere fear that at least part of the losses inflicted amid the uncertainty cannot be undone.

Laura Mayr, the general manager of the Ruggeri winery, which makes Prosecco in northern Italy, said that at this time of the year, she and her staff were usually organizing promotional activities and tastings for US importers. But they had stopped.

"The damage is already done," Mayr said. "We have lost time at a critical moment."