The wine trade has spent the last year in a familiar squeeze. Demand remains uneven, tariffs are still unpredictable, the dollar keeps moving, and distributor reorganizations continue to ripple across the market. Instead of battling uncontrollable market forces, some wine importers have accepted this new reality—and have started developing new ways to operate in this shifting environment. Importers that are holding their ground, and in some cases growing, are rethinking the fundamentals: how they get to market, how they support sell-through, how they finance inventory in a higher-cost world, and how they reduce friction for their partners.
As a result, a new importer playbook is taking shape, and it focuses more on disciplined execution than the hunt for more brands. That mindset is increasingly explicit among the importing companies that are successfully weathering the storm. Alexander Michas, the president and COO of Vintus, sees the current environment as a sorting mechanism that rewards focus and follow-through.
“The exceptional will come out stronger,” he says. “The brands that truly matter in the market, the accounts that adapt quickly to their consumers, the wholesalers who utilize new tools to improve their operations, all companies that double down on customer engagement – they will grow stronger.”
Route-to-market control is the new advantage
In a volatile market, operational control looks different depending on an importer’s model. The common thread is reducing fragile handoffs between importer, wholesaler, and account. Some companies do that by owning distribution in key states. Others do it by aligning incentives with suppliers, or by becoming a more indispensable partner to wholesalers through tighter execution.
Some importers, such as Banville Wine Merchants, also own a direct wholesale business and have leaned into this route as a controllable channel to create measurable execution. According to president Simone Luchetti, the company closed 2025 up 26 percent in revenue over 2024, a figure he noted was measured against a slow start in 2024. As of mid-February, Banville was up 39 percent versus last year.
“The majority of our growth is coming from our own wholesalers, where we can manage the business more directly and execute with greater precision,” says Luchetti.
For Dalla Terra Italian Wine and Spirits, the approach has been of shared control – an importer-producer relationship rooted in alignment rather than ownership. President Scott Ades describes the company as a national agent for its producers, with a partnership structure that makes the producer relationship feel closer to shared investment than a transactional supply arrangement.
“In that partnership, the producers take on some of the cost of the expanded sales organization and will also reap the benefits of our success,” says Ades. “Deciding to expand our team was not just an internal operations decision. Our producers are supporting this fully. A rising tide raises all ships.”
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