(Wine-Searcher) - We might be drinking a little less, but we're drinking better quality, according to the latest export figures.

French, Italian and Spanish wines continued to perform well on the export market, as the global thirst for wine remains seemingly unquenched.

Figures released this week by Dutch agri-bank Rabobank showed that while volumes for French and Italian wines dipped slightly in the first quarter of the year, value was most definitely up.

France recorded a 2 percent drop in volume, but saw value soar by 6.3 percent. European markets – led by the UK – continued to be sticky, but sales in the US and Asia were stronger than expected, with Champagne performing strongly.

Italy saw a 2.2 percent drop in volume, but increased by 3.8 percent in value, reflecting the combined effect of the collapse of bulk wine prices and growth in more-expensive bottlings, especially in the US and Germany. Sparkling wines did particularly well, rising 23.5 percent in quantity and 23.3 percent in value.

The star of the show was Prosecco, which has been recording extraordinary growth in the first half of the year. Prosecco sales to the US alone were up 40 percent to almost $100 million, second only to Champagne, which recorded a rise of 10 percent, to $132 million in value.

Spain is still seeing growth in exports, with a 14.6 percent rise in volume, but only a 3.5 percent rise in value, mainly due to a 22 percent increase in bulk-wine shipments. Bottled-wine shipments grew by only 0.5 percent in volume, but by 5.9 percent in value. The US had stable export volumes, but growth in value was 7 percent, driven by traditional markets such as Germany, but also lesser-known areas, like Poland and Eastern Europe.