Covid-19 has implications on the overall operation of Macedonian wineries and directly affected the decline in domestic sales and export to international markets. The HORECA sector stopped working completely or partially in all countries. The crisis affected the partial or total cuts of marketing costs, by postponing or cancelling planned projects. The wineries failed to sell the planned quantities and were forced to make significantly lower purchases for the 2020 harvest than in previous years. The paper presents a large number of data received from the Association Wines of Macedonia, Customs Office of the Republic of North Macedonia, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy of the Republic of North Macedonia, State Inspectorate for Agriculture, Internet articles containing topics relevant to the research. The additional data presented were collected from Macedonian wineries through a questionnaire on operations during the corona crisis. This paper provides an overview of the problems faced by Macedonian wineries during the corona crisis in terms of marketing and sales, primarily in international markets and analyzes the declined average price and reduced investment in marketing.

The Republic of Macedonia has all the prerequisites for production of high quality wines and has great export potential, but Macedonian wines are almost unknown on the world wine market. Another problem is that most of the exported quantity is bulk wine, although in recent years the ratio between bulk and bottled wine started to change positively in terms of bottled wine. The wine market in the European Union is the most important export destination for Macedonian wines. Given the specificities of the wine market of individual member states, the aim of this paper is to select the countries in which the largest export of wine can be achieved. Macedonian wineries need to focus their export effort on the following markets: Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Methodology of desk research and market analysis is used for the conclusions.