Producers of the fizzy wine say demand far outstrips supply and they are unconcerned by Boris Johnson’s Brexit warning

Boris Johnson may have thought he had discovered Italy’s achilles heel when he suggested in a private meeting recently that the country would capitulate to British demands in Brexit negotiations because it would be loath to “sell less prosecco”.

But in Veneto, where the fizzy wine is made, Johnson’s not-so-subtle threat against one of Italy’s most fashionable exports to Britain was met with bemusement and even confusion.

“It was quite funny … He’s like an actor. He’s not in a position to manage [the business of] prosecco and the taste of the English people,” said Filippo Cigoli, the UK export manager for Maschio dei Cavalieri.

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In the last 48 hours, Cigoli said, he had not heard a word about the controversy from his customers in the UK. “I just received orders,” he said with a laugh.

He gets so many orders, in fact, that Cigoli regularly turns down requests from British supermarkets for more and more prosecco, because he simply does not have enough.

“I refuse a million bottles per week, as if it’s peanuts. As if it’s a glass of water. What can I say? Maybe there is something behind Johnson’s words that we don’t yet understand, but considering how the business is going, it will not change anything,” Cigoli said.

The controversy began when Italy’s economic development minister, Carlo Calenda, said he had been insulted by Johnson during a meeting in which the two had been discussing Brexit.



“He basically said: ‘I don’t want free movement of people but I want the single market,’” Calenda told Bloomberg Television. “I said: ‘No way.’ He said: ‘You’ll sell less prosecco.’ I said: ‘OK, you’ll sell less fish and chips, but I’ll sell less prosecco to one country and you’ll sell less to 27 countries.’ Putting things on this level is a bit insulting.”

Italian and UK officials have sought to downplay the disagreement, with the Italians saying they were eager to put the matter behind them and did not want to blow the significance of the exchange out of proportion. Prosecco had probably not been singled out on purpose, said one Italian official, who nevertheless believed it was “inappropriate” to be discussing specific export issues at this stage.

For Stefano Zanette, the head of the Prosecco Consortium, the fracas hardly spelled doom. “In Italy we say you shouldn’t bandage your head before you break it,” he said. If consumption of prosecco dropped in the UK because it had become much more expensive for British consumers post-Brexit, “we will manage that by betting on other markets”, he said.

At least one producer was perturbed by the fact that in an export market where defence and heavy machinery are by far the biggest economic drivers between the UK and Italy, a product as life-affirming as prosecco would be caught up in a nasty political melodrama.

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Sales of prosecco to the UK have increased from 38 million bottles in 2013 to 94 million last year, in a market that is now worth more than €220m, according to Italy’s prosecco consortium.

“We love England and the English love this drink and we have to focus on these things,” said Giovanni Iaconis, the export manager of La Jara. “It’s a market. It’s what binds us. When I think of London, it’s a place of gastronomy, why should we fight over it?”

He suggested the spat could be resolved simply by sending Johnson a case of the bubbly stuff. “The world is connected through food and drink. Tomorrow it will be würstel from Germany and potatoes from France. Prosecco and fish and chips ought not to be used as weapons.”

Pietro Biscontin, general director of La Delizia, another prosecco maker, said such “political skirmishes” did not give him cause for concern. “The British market is very receptive. They are willing to pay. Brexit is good for prosecco because it will make people who won cheer and will console those who lost,” he said.