The year 2025 is already proving to be a milestone for Vatican City. The death of Pope Francis, aged 88, on 21 April coincided with it being a Jubilee Year, which is typically celebrated every quarter of a century.
More than 30 million pilgrims are expected to flock to Rome, and to the microstate housed within it, over the course of this year. However, this figure was calculated prior to the passing of the Pontiff, meaning that the real number will likely be significantly greater by the conclusion of the 2025 Jubilee.
In spite of its spiritual significance for the estimated 1.4 billion baptised Catholics around the globe, the Vatican is a place still shrouded in mystery. Its internal politics were the subject of the recent Academy Award-winning film Conclave, based on the Robert Harris novel of the same name. Although a fictionalised account of what happens during Papal elections, the book and film aim to shed light on what goes on behind closed doors: scheming Cardinals and an army of staff to support them.
What is not necessarily apparent from media depictions of Vatican life, however, is the vast quantity of wine present.
Import data
With a resident population of between 500 and 1,000 people, according to different estimates, Vatican City is the world’s top wine importer per capita.
Based on 2019 import figures and a population of roughly 800 citizens, the average per-person consumption in the Vatican is around 79 litres per year – equivalent to 99 bottles, a figure double that of the Italian average. Almost all of the wine within the Vatican – 99.9% according to 2019 data from World Integrated Trade Solution – is of Italian origin, an unsurprising fact given the Holy See’s geographical location. The same dataset also reveals that none of the wine arrives in bulk, but is all already in bottle.
Data from the Unione Italiana Vini (UIV) reveals that 54,200 litres of Italian wine were exported to the Vatican in 2024, around 38,000 litres of which were fortified wines, such as those from Marsala in Sicily – which are very often used as Communion wines, hence why they make up such a high proportion. The 2024 figure for all Italian wines sent to the Holy See was notably lower than that of 2023, at 63,000 litres, but that itself was a major increase on 2022’s level of 46,000 litres. The peak in the last decade came in 2018, at 71,700 litres.
Great fluctuations
What the UIV data demonstrates above all else is that the Vatican is a wine market prone to great fluctuations, a trend which is likely indicative of the particular way in which it functions.
First and foremost, the Vatican is not a member of the European Union (hence escaping US President Donald Trump’s recent round of tariffs), meaning that exporting wine there is not quite as straightforward as one might assume. Barbara Sandrone, custodian of her family’s Barolo estate, notes that the company used to sell wine to the Vatican before its person on the inside retired. She compares the process to that for shipping to another microstate within Italy: “There is not much paperwork needed – it’s a similar procedure to exporting to San Marino. What is more complicated is getting the right contact.”
One of the key bureaucratic hurdles wineries must overcome to become an approved supplier to the Vatican is to send an application through its public notice portal, Bandi Pubblici Santa Sede. It should be noted that its list of goods categories distinguishes between ‘drinks’ and ‘wine and hosts for Holy Mass’.
Another Piemontese producer whose wine was previously present in the Vatican is Roberto Bava. Although he is perhaps best-known as managing director of Vermouth di Torino producer Cocchi, it was a wine from Bava’s family estate, Bava Vini, which was exported to Vatican City.
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