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Issue 509 - January 25th - 29th 2021 - Expressly created for 11.897 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world |
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It is still a niche channel, but it has been the star, growing exponentially during the health Pandemic, and everyone is saying it will continue to grow in 2021 as well. Wine e-commerce in Italy is now experiencing its moment of glory. It emerges from a recent study carried out by Nomisma Wine Monitor, according to which the online wine turnover in Italy is worth between 150 and 200 million euros; however, it will continue to grow. According to the research, there has also been an increase in the size of e-commerce: as it has been estimated that the weight on total sales in the retail channel should have grown from 1% in 2019 to 2-3% in 2020. |
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Wine, for some territories, is the absolute pillar of the economy and of the social and occupational fabric, with the vine as the main actor of agriculture. Yet, where with district projects, where on the push of single companies, in many places there is a diversification of production, always in the sign of typicality and excellence. A sort of small “return to the past”, in a certain sense. A re-evolution of the winery and of the highly specialized agriculture towards a new vision of the agricultural business which contemplates more productions, which traces a different course for the future, embodying in the widest possible sense the concept of “biodiversity”. And if in many Italian territories one of the historical and most common synergies to the production of wine is the one of oil, which is produced in good quantities and of high quality by an important number of prestigious wineries of the whole country, companies and wine territories are rediscovering and enhancing ancient grains and cereals, production of cheese, saffron, honey, fruit, pasta and so on. Among the most structured territorial case histories, there is that of Chianti Classico, where a real Rural District of Chianti has been created, where the production of olive oil, pecorino cheese, Tuscan bread, Cinta Senese meat, cinta senese meat, cold cuts is also promoted. Or that of Montalcino, where the brand “Eccellenze di Montalcino” was born, the brand already registered by the Fondazione Territoriale del Brunello, a socio-cultural emanation of the Consorzio del Brunello, created in 2016 with the desire to reinvest part of the profits for the benefit of the territory. Here, among others, stands out the case of Castello Banfi, one of the leading companies in the area, which, among other things, is also one of the largest Italian producers of plums, and also produces honey, oil and pasta from high-quality local grains. Or again, the case of the Langhe, where some great wine producers such as Ceretto have invested in hazelnut groves, and other producers, such as Elio Altare and others, have focused on excellence such as Castelmagno cheese. Examples of wineries and wine territories that, especially in recent years, have revived and are growing, agricultural originality made of biodiversity, of great interest, modern, able to give new prosperity to the many territories of Italy. |
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Also for Italian wine shops, whether they are members of Vinarius or not, it is time to draw up a balance sheet about the trend of what has been a year that has asked great sacrifices to the sector. From the end-of-year survey, emerge “the heavy consequences of the crisis: from the point of view of sales, for more than 46% of those interviewed, 2020 was clearly worse than 2019. Interesting data on Christmas, which, for almost 50% of the sample, represented a real breath of fresh air, registering sales higher than those of the previous year”, comments Andrea Terraneo, president of Vinarius. “Same dynamic if you look at the customer’s spending capacity. If we widen our gaze, however, to the entire 2020s, this trend is reversed and nearly 45% responded that it was worse”. |
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Wine to save the Italian art masterpieces. The idea came from the Civita Association, a non-profit organization founded in 1987, and the Caparzo di Montalcino Estate. By purchasing the wines of the special Civitas line signed by Caparzo - that is, a bottle of Brunello, a bottle of Sangiovese and a bottle of Bianco TGI, contained in collector boxes - you become a sponsor of projects aimed at restoring small, but prestigious pieces of our immense artistic heritage. Elisabetta Gnudi Angelini, at the helm of Caparzo, has become the interpreter of an evolved form of contemporary patronage. “I have always had a great passion for art, history and archeology”, explained the entrepreneur, one of the great ladies of Brunello di Montalcino; she owns, together with Caparzo and Altesino, over 150 hectares of vineyards in Montalcino, of which 62 Brunello and 25 Rosso, and Borgo Scopeto, in Chianti Classico, “and this is also the reason I got involved in this exciting project drawn up by the late Gianfranco Imperatori”. Caparzo became involved in the activity of Civita in 2005: “every year, the proceeds from the sale of these wines, which amounts to about 20-30.000 euros, are distributed to specific projects, whose accounts I personally verify”, added Elisabetta Gnudi Angelini. |
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From testimonies of history linked to wine to a cultural wine tourism attraction in the present: the by now famous Florentine “buchette del vino”, which WineNews wrote about in unsuspicious times, now, thanks to the “Associazione Culturale Buchette del Vino di Firenze” and to the Assessorato al Turismo of the city, become the “stops” of a guided tour to the discovery of these little windows opened in some of the most important palaces of the city for the sale of wine during the Renaissance, and that today some reopened to serve their products in an anti-contagion mode. |
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Primum Familiae Vini, the association which gathers 12 wine dynasties of the world, including Marchesi Antinori and Tenuta San Guido, has limited to five the number of companies in the running for “The Pfv Prize”, a prize of 100,000 euros to be assigned to a historical company, obviously family-run, of the world craftsmanship. In contention, there is also an Italian company, Giusto Manetti Battiloro, producer of gold leaf in Florence since 1582. It will have to compete with French Makhila Ainciart Bergara, which makes fine walking sticks; Japanese Chin Jukan Kiln, a maker of Satsuma-yak pottery since 1876; British The Goring Hotel, London’s only luxury hotel in the hands of the founding family; and Belgian Maison Bernard, Europe’s oldest violin-making workshop. The winner will be revealed in March. |
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Italian wine is not actually doing all that badly on the international scene. Of course, it is far off the growth it had seen in recent years. However, the Italian statistics agency ISTAT data on worldwide exports of Italian wine, which WineNews analyzed, has revealed that all in all, in the first 10 months of 2020 the decline has been limited: the value of shipments in October touched 5.11 billion euros, equal to a 3.4% decrease compared to 2019. The main market is still the USA, down 5.5% to 1.21 billion euros in value. Germany is doing better, but Great Britain is falling. |
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