Wine importers in the United States: how many buy each origin

We have added the United States to our wine records. There the source is the ocean import manifest, which does not declare value: so we count tonnes, containers, importers and wineries, with no dollars or prices. These are the September 2026 figures for five origins.

By VS-Trade Research · Market analysis

Five origins in September 2026

Wine that arrived in the US by sea during the month, by country of origin:

Tonnes are gross weight: wine, glass and packaging. A winery is identified when the manifest shipper matches a winery in our records; the remaining shipments are counted without a name. Forwarders and freight agents are not counted as importers.

Month by month, since June

Importers with at least one arrival in each month:

Gross tonnes arrived in each month:

Our records start in June 2026. With only 4 months of records we do not yet talk about trends or about who started or stopped receiving: those signals are published once there are twelve months.

Who buys from your competitors

For each winery on our list we count the US importers that, between June and September 2026, received wine from two or more identified wineries of the same country and none from it. Only importers whose shipments from that origin name the winery in 80% or more of cases are included: for the rest, not appearing does not prove they don't buy from it. The median by origin:

• Italy: 50 importers (median across 18 wineries)
• France: 37 importers (median across 11 wineries)
• Spain: 42 importers (median across 63 wineries)
• Chile: 11 importers (median across 23 wineries)
• Argentina: 17 importers (median across 11 wineries)

These are importers that already work with several wineries from your country in the US. That is the list to start with.

What a winery should look at

1. How many importers receive wine from my country each month, and how many containers?
2. Which of them buy from two or more wineries from my country and not from me?
3. Which importers received my wine this month, and in how many shipments?

Your origin

The United States, by volume, is included in the wine subscription, together with Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru:

• Italian wine
• French wine
• Spanish wine (in Spanish)
• Chilean wine (in Spanish)
• Argentine wine (in Spanish)

How we measure it

In the United States the source is the ocean import manifest: it does not declare value, so there we count gross tonnes (wine, glass and packaging), containers, importers and wineries, with no amounts or per-litre figures. It covers sea freight only: not wine entering by land from Canada and Mexico, nor air freight. That is nearly all of it: according to the US Census Bureau, 98% of the value of the wine the United States imported between June and August 2026 arrived by sea (99% for wine from Spain, Italy, France, Argentina and Chile). Records start in June 2026. Figures are by vessel arrival month. Details in our methodology.

Argentine wine shipped through Chilean ports (it crosses the Andes and the manifest records it as received at San Antonio or Valparaíso) is assigned to Argentina, not Chile, when the shipper is an identified Argentine winery: Argentine address or CUIT tax ID declared in the manifest, or an Argentine winery in our records. Between June and September 2026 that was 1,315 gross t in 67 shipments. Shipments with only a weak signal (the word 'Malbec' or 'Mendoza', or a forwarder with an office in Argentina) stay counted under Chile, and the Argentina and Chile reports state every month how much was moved.