Winemakers in Sicily are looking east in a bid to grow their customer bases.

Yet while the French regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy - along with a number of other producers in Italy - are looking to China and the Asia-Pacific market, Sicilians are looking for growth in India.

A delegation led by officials of the Sicilian government-backed Istituto Regionale della Vite e del Vino (IRVV) and including representatives from the leading winemaking families in Sicily has now visited India in a bid to build trade relationships, according to the Economic Times.

Sicily has 119,000 hectare of land under viticulture, more than double that of the more successful Italian winemaking regions of Piedmont, home to Barolo, or Tuscany.

"In Sicily, we have 710 companies, 55 of them cooperatives which make and sell wines although we bottle only 25 per cent of our production," Dario Cartabellotta, director general of the IRVV, told the publication.

"Earlier, the French used to take our wines to blend with theirs but in past couple of decades all the Sicilian wineries have chosen to improve quality and produce distinct Sicilian wines."

While the Sicilian delegation arrival coincides with pressure from the European Union to get India to lower its import duties, Mr Cartabellotta insists the region has been looking to target the Indian market for some time.

"Our market research showed that as India economy is growing, Indian people's demand for cultural exchange and for foreign goods is growing fast as well. What we are eager to do is not to sell our products, but to exchange our traditions with India," he explained.

Meanwhile, the Veneto and Friuli regions of Italy are looking for a different kind of expansion, a little closer to home.

Gianluca Bisol, managing director of the leading Prosecco estate of the same name, recently revealed that massive investment plans are in place to increase production of Prosecco from the 220 million-bottle annual output currently achieved to one billion bottles a year by 2035.