Dec. 8 – This Christmas and New Year, Italy will toast to the export record of its sparkling wine. According to an analysis published by Coldiretti, based on Istat data on foreign trade in the first eight months of 2014, the bottles of Italian sparkling wines shipped abroad increased by 22%. If in Italy, Italians have always preferred homegrown bubbles – underlines Coldiretti – abroad, there have never been so many requests like this year. In sharp contrast to the difficulties of the national economy, 2014 will close with shipment abroad of 300 million bottles of sparkling wine, an all-time record. Italian sparkling wine thus overcomes French champagne, which recorded a 6% increase in exports over the same period.