After years of constant growth with rates between +1% and +1.5%, in 2019 Italy’s mascarpone cheese export sales grew by +6.5%. Moreover, in the first eight months of 2020 exports skyrocketed: +15%, with peaks of +20% in Germany, France, Belgium, and England.
Mascarpone is not a niche product. In fact about 100 thousand tons are produced per year for a total turnover of 450 million euros. “In the last week of March – says the Italian dairy producers association, Assolatte – sales in Italy grew by +99% compared to the same period of 2019.”
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THE TIRAMISU BENEFIT
The boom in sales of Made in Italy mascarpone, both in the domestic market and abroad, has much to do with a “magic word” that, like “pizza” and “spaghetti” is used without translation all over the world: “tiramisu”. Tiramisu is the most famous Italian dessert in the world. As a word, it is present in 23 different foreign languages, as we can read in the book “Tiramisu” by food writers Clara and Gigi Padovani.
Among the initiatives of Clara and Gigi Padovani there is also the TiramisuDay. It is organized since 2016 every year on March 21 in collaboration with Oscar Farinetti, the founder of Eataly which is the biggest Italian food hall in the world. “The origins of Tiramisu date back to the 1970s in the North East of Italy – says Gigi Padovani – but it is only thanks to its success in hotels and restaurants, first in Venice and then in Rome, that it began to be appreciated by tourists. Its presence in Italian restaurants abroad, where it is always present, has made its worldwide notoriety skyrocket.” This is how the international diffusion of the Italian dessert par excellence has triggered, and still does, the exports boom of Italy’s mascarpone.
