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Issue 611 - January 9th - 13th 2023 - Expressly created for 4.429 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world |
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It wasn't a roaring December for the stock markets, which closed 2022 exactly as expected: with a loss. A crisis, that of financial investments, which actually goes far beyond the stock exchanges, ended up involving oil and fine wines, saving only gold. In fact, the last month of the year recorded a drop of 0.2% in the Liv-ex 100. The Liv-ex 1000 also closed the year down: -0.4%, with the Italy 100 which does even worse, losing 0.6%. The drop in fine wines, however, is definitely lower than others, like for instance NASDAQ that registered 6.9% loss in December 2022 (in more detail). |
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Ireland has been sounding the alarm since June 2022, not too loudly, perhaps. Now, what was once just a possibility has become a certainty. Consequently, it has become a threat to alcoholic beverages and the wine sector. Dublin had opened the rift on June 21, 2022, notifying the European Commission of the “Public Health Alcohol Labelling Regulations” with which the Government intended to introduce the obligation to report indications relating to cancer, pregnant women and liver disease on labeling and presentations of alcoholic beverages. This was a big jump forward that went beyond what the “Beating Cancer Plan” had established, which had managed to avoid introducing “health warnings”. From that moment on, the European Union Commission had until September 22nd to present its objections, which, however, were never manifested. Therefore, once the moratorium period expired at the end of December 2022, Ireland could adopt a label for wine, beer and spirits indicating warnings such as “alcohol consumption causes liver disease” and “alcohol and terminal cancer are directly connected”. Brussels has given the go-ahead in spite of opposing positions from Italy, France and Spain and six other European Union states, which consider the measure a barrier to the domestic market. Further, the Commission has announced joint initiatives on labeling alcoholic beverages in the context of the plan to beat cancer. Now the danger is that other countries could follow the Irish example. Lamberto Frescobaldi, president of the Italian wine union, Unione Italiana Vini (UIV) said, “Brussels’ silent approval to Dublin related to health warnings on labels of alcoholic beverages represents a dangerous leap forward by a Member country”. Micaela Pallini, president of Federvini, said the Irish legislation, which would apply criminalizing messages regarding the relationship between alcohol and health on all alcoholic beverages sold in the Country, is “unilateral, discriminatory and disproportionate”. On a war footing, together with Confagricoltura and CIA, Paolo De Castro and Coldiretti, which speaks of a dangerous precedent, which opens the door to Community legislation that would jeopardize a supply chain which, in Italy, guarantees 1.3 million jobs.
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Americans are preparing to celebrate Barolo as “his Majesty”: two gala events dedicated to the great Piedmontese wine, on January 28 in Los Angeles and, from February 1 to 4, in New York, organized by Vinous by Antonio Galloni, one of the top experts of the prestigious Italian denomination. At the “Festa del Barolo”, edition n.10, there will be the Bartolo Mascarello, E.Pira (Chiara Boschis), Elio Altare, Francesco Rinaldi, Giacomo Fenocchio, La Spinetta, Luciano Sandrone, Paolo Scavino, Piero Benevelli, Poderi e Cantine Oddero, Vietti, Producers of Barbaresco, Armando Parusso, Castello di Verduno, Fratelli Alessandria, G.B. Burlotto and Giuseppe Rinaldi. |
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Little snow, record heat, very little rain, and just after a few days of 2023, for agriculture - both Italian and European - is already a climate alert. Also in the vineyards, although the next harvest is, at least relatively, very far away. On the one hand, temperatures are, constantly above average, and on the other, the drought, because without winter rainfall, the vineyards will have to face yet another summer of heat. After all, although the vine is a resilient plant, “it suffers drought just like the tomato plant”, the evolutionary ecophysiologist Sylvain Delzon, a researcher at the University of Bordeaux, reminded to “Vitisphere”. With differences between one variety and another, which are however “zeroed” by the rootstock. “The variety is drought tolerant along with its rootstock, and the result depends on the combination of the two. There are genetically economical varieties in terms of water management, and others that are wasteful. When the rootstock intervenes, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it substantially changes the attitude of the different varieties”. And this because “the brain of a plant, and therefore of the vine, is in the roots: by changing them, with the rootstock, we change the behavior of the variety” (in more details).
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As in recent days, the news that has “made headlines” on “Forbes” is that the currently richest man in the world is “a wine producer” Bernard Arnault, owner of the luxury colossus Lvmh, we had fun looking for the billionaires more or less involved in the production of wine. Looking to Italy, we find, among others, the designer Giorgio Armani, who produces passito wine on Pantelleria and the Brazilian financier Andrè Esteves, who owns Argiano in Montalcino (in more details). |
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Between wine and eros, great beauty and trivial reality, the
iconic “Domus” of the ancient Roman city buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in
79 AD, belonged to Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus, two
freedmen who became rich through the wine trade but also practiced
prostitution, as evidenced by the extraordinary frescoes in the room of the
Harvesting Cupids, a prelude to the triumph of Dionysus. This is the House of
the Vettii in Pompeii, reopened to the public after 20 years of restoration,
thanks to which we are once again able to admire a masterpiece, which also
reflect the wealth of the city’s territory, where wine was produced for export
throughout the Mediterranean.
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For Banfi, the winery marked the commercial and
communicative success of Brunello di Montalcino, starting right from the USA, a
new page is opening, with Cristina Mariani-May, the third generation of the
company, increasingly the protagonist of the Banfi of the future, and at the top
of a governance renewed and redefined, today, in the positions (in more details).
With the goal of uniting more and more the Italian and American souls of the
company, and continuing along the path of cultural continuity and family
ownership.
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