US Imports of Spanish Wine: The 2026 Numbers Behind the Slowdown

Spanish wine has been a fixture on US import lists for fifteen years — never the biggest name in the room, always a steady mid-pack presence behind France and Italy. That steadiness broke in 2025. US imports of Spanish wine fell to $339.6 million (customs value), down 13% from 2024's $391.4 million, and the decline has continued into 2026. This is what the trade numbers say about why, what's actually shifting inside the category, and what distributors carrying Spanish lines should be doing about it right now.

The Headline Number: 2025 Down 13%, 2026 Still Falling

US Census trade data (HS 2204) puts 2025 imports of Spanish wine at $339.6 million on a customs (FOB) basis, down from $391.4 million in 2024 — a 13% drop in value.¹ Volume held up better, falling only 3.0% to 65.3 million liters (roughly 7.26 million nine-liter cases), which means most of 2025's damage showed up in price and mix rather than in units on the water.

The freshest data — January through July 2026 versus the same months of 2025 — shows no rebound: Spanish wine imports are down 13.9% in value and 10.8% in volume.¹ It isn't a clean tariff test: the 2026 months carried the new tariff throughout, while the 2025 months carried only the 10% baseline from April and none before it. It's also, as the next section shows, milder than the US wine import market overall.

Fifteen Years, One Chart: 2010 to the 2021 Peak to Now

Zoom out and the 2025-2026 slide looks less like a cliff and more like a retreat from an unusually strong run. On a landed (CIF) basis — the consistent series to use across a year range that mixes CIF and FOB reporting — Spanish wine's US value grew from $282.4 million in 2010 to a peak of $433.4 million in 2021, a 4.0%-per-year climb.¹ Since that peak, it's declined at roughly 4.3% per year, landing at $363.3 million in 2025 — 16% below the 2021 high.

The middle of that arc is a tariff case study. In October 2019, the US imposed a 25% tariff on Spanish still wine at or below 14% ABV under the WTO-sanctioned Airbus subsidy retaliation — sparkling wine, wine above 14% ABV, and bulk wine were exempt.¹ The measured hit was smaller than the headline rate implied: Spain's US value fell just 1.9% in 2019 (partial year, plus pre-buying ahead of the October effective date) and 11.2% in 2020, though COVID's on-premise collapse muddies that second number. The tariff was suspended in March 2021 and formalized into a five-year truce that June — and Spain's US value jumped 30% that year, the largest annual move in the series, part tariff relief and part pandemic reopening bounce.

Then came 2025. A 10% baseline US tariff hit EU wine in April, rising to 15% from August 2025 under the EU-US trade framework deal, with no exemption for wine or spirits.² The legal footing has kept moving since: trade press reported a change in the tariff's legal basis in July 2026, with some sources putting the current burden nearer 10% and others reporting 15% locked in through 2029.³ Treat the rate in force as something to confirm with your customs broker before you price, not a settled number.

Landed (CIF) value of US wine imports from Spain, 2010-2025. Source: US Census Bureau trade data (HS 2204).

The Mix Is Shifting: Sparkling Up, Bulk Still Nowhere, Price Pulling Back

Underneath the topline, Spain's US business has been quietly premiumizing and bubbling. Sparkling wine (Cava and other, HS 220410) grew from 24.0% of Spain's US wine export value in 2010 to a peak of 30.3% in 2021, settling at 27.3% in 2025.¹ Bulk and bag-in-box wine remain a rounding error: together just $5.2 million of 2025's $363 million landed (CIF) total (not the $339.6 million customs/FOB figure used earlier), under 1.5% either way. This is a bottled-and-sparkling story, not a bulk one.

Price per liter tells a related story. Spain's US landed (CIF) value ran $4.14-$5.35/liter through most of the 2010s, jumped to $5.67-$6.17/liter in 2022-2024 as post-truce premiumization and inflation took hold, then eased to $5.56/liter in 2025.¹ That pullback fits importers and distributors compressing price to protect volume against the new tariff rather than passing it through fully — a pattern also visible in Rías Baixas, where exporters trimmed ex-cellar prices roughly 1% specifically to protect distributor margins rather than shock the shelf.⁴

Cava/sparkling (HS 220410) share of Spain's total US wine export value, 2010-2025. Source: US Census Bureau trade data (HS 2204).

Spain vs. Its Peers: Losing Less Than Almost Everyone

Spain remains the #4 supplier to the US wine market by value, behind France ($2.38 billion), Italy ($2.03 billion) and New Zealand ($473 million), and ahead of Australia, Argentina, Chile and Portugal — a rank it's held every year since 2021 (Australia edged ahead in both 2018 and 2020).¹ Spain's 2025 share of total US wine import value was 5.5%.

The 2026 year-to-date comparison is where Spain's position looks best. Against a world average decline of 18.8% in value (12.3% in volume) for January-July 2026 versus the same months of 2025, Spain's 13.9%/10.8% decline is meaningfully milder: a real, if modest, share gain inside a shrinking market.¹ France's numbers hide a distortion: import value fell 18.0% even as volume rose 16.8%, consistent with a bulk-wine destocking flood dragging the average price down. Australia (-36.2% value) and Chile (-33.6%) — both leaning harder on value-tier supply — took the worst of it on both axes.

US wine import value, Jan-Jul 2026 vs Jan-Jul 2025, by origin country. Source: US Census Bureau trade data (HS 2204).

US wine import value by origin country, 2025 (customs/FOB basis). Source: US Census Bureau trade data (HS 2204).

Rioja and Cava, By the Numbers

Rioja is one of Spain's best-known individual appellations in the US — 10.41 million liters in 2024, up 17% year-over-year, with the US ranking as Rioja's #2 export market by value and #3 by volume among roughly 135 markets it ships to.⁵ That run reversed hard in 2025: US shipments fell 7.57% versus 2024, per the Consejo Regulador's own annual report.⁶ The comparison set doesn't cleanly isolate a tariff effect: Canada grew 12.59% the same year, while the UK fell 13.16% and Switzerland fell 10.63% — none of those three markets carries the US tariff, so the UK and Switzerland declines argue against, not for, reading this set as a tariff signature. One bright spot: Gran Reserva, Rioja's top aging tier, grew 16.79% domestically and 6.89% in exports — premiumization holding even as broader volume didn't.⁶

Cava's story is easy to mis-attribute. US bottle sales fell 4.58% in 2024 to 17.8 million, per DO Cava — but Spanish trade press is explicit that this decline predates and is unrelated to the 2025 tariff, tracing instead to a 2022-2023 drought that cut grape supply.⁷ Catalonia-wide wine and Cava exports to the US actually grew in 2024 (€78.8 million, up 10.4% in turnover and 7% in volume), making the US Catalonia's #1 wine/Cava export destination by value.⁷ Rosé Cava (+3.31%) and organic Cava (+24.59%) both grew, echoing the premiumization pattern in Rioja's Gran Reserva. Neither DO publishes a US-dollar value figure for the American market — both report liters and bottle counts only — so no clean $/case figure exists for either independently of the blended HS 2204 totals above.

What Distributors Should Do Now

1. Skew inventory and floor presentation toward the tiers actually growing. Gran Reserva Rioja grew double digits domestically even as overall Rioja fell 7.57%; industry reporting identifies the $15-30 "premium" band as the only US price tier posting both volume and value growth in 2025.⁸ Defending base-tier case counts is a weaker bet than featuring the premium end of the same portfolios.
2. Price against the tariff's real shelf impact, not the border rate alone. Reporting on the three-tier markup structure describes a border tariff compounding into a meaningfully larger retail increase by the time a bottle clears distributor and retailer markup — treat that as directional when negotiating supplier pricing and setting shelf targets.⁹
3. Model 2026H2 and 2027 assuming the destocking overhang has largely cleared. Industry voices reported by mid-2026 that the inventory backlog behind 2025's steepest declines had mostly worked through the channel.¹⁰ If that holds, further softness reflects real demand, not channel noise — plan reorder points accordingly rather than waiting for a destocking-driven bounce.
4. Use Spain's relative resilience as a sell-in argument. A 13.9% year-to-date decline against an 18.8% market-wide decline is a genuine differentiator when a buyer is deciding which import lines survive a shelf reset — lead with it.
5. Plan for a tariff, not for relief. Since August 2025 EU wine has carried a US tariff with no wine/spirits carve-out, and the July 2026 legal-basis change moved the rate rather than removing it.³ Write supplier contracts with a tariff-adjustment clause and build portfolio bets on a tariff staying in place, whatever the exact rate.

Sources

1. US Census Bureau trade data (HS 2204), via UN Comtrade.
2. ICEX (Spain's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Tourism, Trade Office at the Embassy of Spain in New York), "El Mercado del Vino en Estados Unidos 2025," December 2025.
3. Vinetur (vinetur.com), 2026 reporting on the EU-US tariff framework.
4. Rías Baixas D.O. export data, via industry press.
5. Consejo Regulador DOCa Rioja, 2024 Annual Report, via riojawine.com.
6. Consejo Regulador DOCa Rioja, 2025 Annual Report; empresaexterior.com.
7. Cava DO sector data, via cava.wine, foodiesonmenorca.com and ara.cat.
8. Industry pricing-tier reporting, via thedrinksbusiness.com, August 2025.
9. Tariff shelf-impact reporting, via getwineos.com, 2026.
10. Industry commentary on 2026 destocking, via trade press.