The European Commission's latest trade figures carry a message wine importers should not wave away: Europe's growth abroad is now coming from spirits, not wine, and the gap is widest in the United States. I read this as a shift in the export mix that will outlast the current tariff cycle, and buyers who treat wine's weakness as a temporary dip risk carrying the wrong inventory into 2027.
The Commission's report on agri-food trade through August, published on October 29 and built on Eurostat data, shows EU exports of spirits and liqueurs at 6.054 billion euros for January to August 2026. That is up from 5.471 billion euros a year earlier, a gain of about 11%. Wine and related products moved the other way, slipping from 10.809 billion to 10.645 billion euros, roughly 2% lower. The broader beer, cider and other beverages group dipped by 37 million euros. All of these are values, not volumes, so they say what the trade was worth rather than how many cases crossed a border.
The United States is where the split is sharpest. EU spirits exports to the US rose 9% in value, wine fell 5% and beer dropped 39%. The Commission credits the spirits rebound mainly to Ukraine and the US, with Russia and Kazakhstan also buying more. Spirits are recovering from a weak 2025, when they fell 4.7%, while wine is extending a decline after losing 5.5% last year. Spirits now account for about 36.3% of the combined wine and spirits export value, up from 33.6% in the same months of 2025.
One detail in the report changes how I read the US numbers. The Commission notes that trade with the US was unusually strong in early 2025, likely because companies pulled orders forward ahead of announced tariffs. That inflated base makes any decline look deeper and any growth look smaller. Wine's 5% fall in the US is partly mechanical as a result. Spirits, though, grew 9% against that same inflated base, which tells me their gain reflects real demand rather than timing.
The scale of the swing is easy to miss in percentages, so here is the simple arithmetic. Spirits added 583 million euros of exports while wine lost 164 million euros. Divide 583 by 164 and you get about 3.55, so for every euro of export value wine gave up, spirits added more than three and a half. It also sits awkwardly next to a figure I wrote about on October 21: Italian wine exports to the US jumped nearly 17% in value in the third quarter. The periods differ, but if EU wine to the US is still down 5% through August, Italy's jump looks even more like distributors restocking in a single quarter than a broad recovery in what Americans drink.
This is the lens I use at Grus Drinks, where we import and distribute premium wine in New York and Toronto. A falling export value for European wine is not only a problem for producers. It is information for the importer. When the category is under pressure, the leverage moves to the buyer who can show sell-through. The approach I favor is a tighter list: fewer European labels carried on hope, more on proven depletion, and price conversations with producers that reflect a market where wine is competing harder for the same customer than it did two years ago.
What I will watch is the full-year figure. If spirits keep gaining share of Europe's drinks exports through December, the distribution system on this side of the Atlantic will follow the money, and wine will have to earn its shelf space bottle by bottle.