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Issue 726 - March 24th - 28th 2025 - Expressly created for 3701 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world | |
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| | | “Irresponsible”, young people, as the Italian singer Achille Lauro defined them in his last song at Festival di Sanremo. Certainly, fundamental, young people, for the future, even of the wine market. To whom, especially at a time like this, of great difficulty for consumption (and “broadening” the definition of “young” a bit, up to the under 44s, ed.), they give hope. Because they raise their glasses from the table to make it a status symbol, they are willing to spend on super premium labels, but without becoming attached to brands, they uncork in company and do not want to give up cocktails. This is the picture, between the U.S. and Italy, taken by the Uiv-Vinitaly Observatory (in more detail). | |
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| | Coming after the 2024 export record for Italian wine (8.1 billion euros, +5.5%), but also in the midst of the storm caused by the querelle over U.S. duties, the world’s leading wine market and Italy’s leading foreign partner, Vinitaly 2025, which will be staged at VeronaFiere from April 6 to 9. Where the goal, as always after all, will be to enhance the work of companies, the quality of Italian wine, and to look to the future beyond contingencies, focusing not only on conjunctural issues, such as that of duties, precisely, but also on structural ones, from the theme “wine and health”, with a focus on the new products that will arrive on labels, where the approach, it is hoped, will be more inform than scare, looking at the relationship between consumption and health, and which will be discussed at Vinitaly in the presence of EU Health Commissioner Olivér Várhely, but also European wine policies, which will find a new framework after the “Wine Package” that Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen, also present in Verona, presented in recent days (and whose draft we anticipated in recent days). All in the presence of 4,000 companies, and thousands and thousands of operators from Italy and 140 nations. In particular, the aim is to confirm the contingent of 30,000 buyers of international demand, including the United States, for what is the biggest “business agenda” of the made-in-Italy wine industry. This is the picture of the only international exhibition dedicated to Italian wine taken in recent days in Rome, at the presentation at Palazzo Montemartini. At the center, of course, the business at the fair, and the “wine lovers” in the city, with “Vinitaly and the City”, but also many new features: from the space dedicated to wines and products “no & low” alcohol to that for wine tourism, to an even closer relationship with the “Italian Cuisine” that awaits Unesco recognition, and with fine dining (with the award for 30 years of Osteria Francescana to the No. 1 of Italian chefs, Massimo Bottura, present at the fair every day at the Emilia Romagna pavilion). As told by VeronaFiere’s top management, Federico Bricolo and Adolfo Rebughini, the Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, the president of the Ice Agency, Matteo Zoppas, and representatives of the wine industry, which, united, looks to the future. | |
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| | Gaja, the undisputed symbol of the Langhe region of Barbaresco and Barolo, of the Gaja family, a winery led by Angelo Gaja with his children Gaia, Rossana and Giovanni, and his wife Lucia, is the best Italian (and European) wine brand in the world, and No. 2 overall, behind the most admired brand, which is that of the Argentine winery Catena. This is the verdict of “The World’s Most Admired Wine Brands” 2025, the ranking drawn up every year by the magazine “Drinks International” and analyzed by WineNews, based on the votes cast by an “academy”, made up of 100 of the most influential wine writers, horeca entrepreneurs, Masters of Wine and others. In the ranking, also Antinori, Sassicaia, Frescobaldi, Planeta, Tignanello and Ornellaia. | |
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| | | “Yours are sectors aware of how commitment to quality”, not only “benefits Italian agricultural sectors, increasing the value of production”, but also the “demand for Italy in the world”. Agribusiness “alongside culture, design, and technology, constitutes a vehicle and attraction of the Italian way of life”. There are many salient passages in President Mattarella’s speech at the “Forum of Oil and Wine Culture” (full, on WineNews). He recalled the numbers for which Italy is a leader, but above all the “intangible value” of “common goods” because their supply chains bring together territories, knowledge, professionalism, sustainability and healthiness and marketing, from the postwar period, avoiding the abandonment of the land, to today that producing means “inhabiting a place, taking care of it”. And this is thanks to the “ability to lead innovation” because “if today we can speak of a “DOP economy”, we owe it to the modernization choices made at the dawn of the Republic and the birth of the European Communities”, he said, citing the Constitution, “the only one of its time to devote an article to the primary sector” (44), the 1957 Treaty of Rome in which agriculture is the “engine of European integration”, Paolo Desana and the law of denominations (930/1963) and Mario Soldati “cantor” of territories. | |
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| | | Prosecco, Chianti and Lambrusco are confirmed as the best-selling wines in the Italian large-scale retail trade (including the e-commerce channel of generalist brands), where volumes are decreasing against a slight growth in values. This is the snapshot of 2024 taken by the anticipations of the “Circana for Vinitaly” research (staged in Verona April 6-9), according to which 753 million liters of wine and sparkling wine, with a total value of more than 3.1 billion euros, will be sold in 2024 in large-scale distribution. | |
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| | For the first time in history, an Italian wine gets on the pulpit at Harvard: the prestigious American university in Massachusetts (a member of the famous Ivy League, i.e., the group composed of 8 elite universities in the United States), has hosted, in recent days, a masterclass dedicated to Barolo, one of the most prestigious appellations on the Italian wine scene. The President of the Barolo Consortium, Sergio Germano, together with Maestro Peter Salerno, from the New York delegation of the Knights of the Order of the Knights of the Truffle and Wines of Alba, led participants on a sensory journey to discover the 2021 vintage (just released) of four Barolo Docg wines with Additional Geographical Mention. But the focus was also on the production territory - with the four municipalities of interest - followed by a horizontal tasting. | |
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| | The everlasting passion of the U.S. for Italian wine, witnessed by their confirmation as the first export market, but threatened by Trump’s tariffs, will be renewed at Vinitaly 2025, thanks to 131 wines from Italy, standard-bearers of Italy in the States and beyond. The occasion, as has become a tradition, will be OperaWine 2025, the “grand tasting” prologue to the benchmark Italian wine fair, on April 5 at Gallerie Mercatali in Verona, with the icon-wineries of the most important territories, selected by “Wine Spectator” for Veronafiere-Vinitaly. | |
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