Spain and the world (of wine)

In a recently released report on Spanish wine exports, the market analysis company DBK, highlighted the following trends and achievements:

Spanish wineries are opening wineries in New World, principally in Chile and Argentina, or are buying into existing wineries. These foreign subsidiaries of Spanish wineries enjoyed sales of 225 million euros in 2004. As one might expect given their location, the majority of sales (52%) were to markets in the Americas, followed by 25% to Europe, 18% to Australia and 5% to Asia.

From Spain in 2004, wine exports increased by 5% from the previous year, reaching a sales figure of 1.6 billion euros. The top three export markets for Spanish wine were Germany, the UK and the USA, accounting for 46% of the total; by area, the European Union took in 71% of Spanish wine exports.

The 5 leading exporters of Spanish wine, sparkling wine and liquors (Freixenet, Allied Domecq, Arco Bodegas Unidas, Grupo Bodegas y Bebidas and Grupo González Byass) accounted for 35% of the total value of exports. (Note: Given that Bodegas y Bebidas is a subsidiary of Allied Domecq, I believe the DBK report should have listed this information as the top 4 exporters - ST)