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Issue 673 - March 18th - 22nd 2024 - Expressly created for 4720 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world | |
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| | | A medal to recognize the value of a great project capable of uniting the excellence of wine with true inclusion: Marco Caprai received the title of Officer of Merit of the Italian Republic, at the Quirinal, in Rome, from the hands of President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, who wanted to reward, for ethical entrepreneurship, the producer who has relaunched Sagrantino di Montefalco in the world, for the project that, started in 2016, together with Caritas of Foligno has given more than 200 asylum seekers a job in his company, the Arnaldo Caprai of Montefalco, thus promoting integration. | |
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| | A turnover of 45 billion euros: that’s how much wine is worth to the EU, the world’s largest wine region, with France, Italy and Spain accounting for more than 80%. Italy, where the sector generates a turnover of more than 30 billion (in 2022), 14 of which comes from production, whose supply chain has 530,000 companies and 870,000 workers, and, with 7.8 billion in exports 2023, is the first item in the agri-food trade balance with a surplus of 7.2 billion. But Italian wine is also the world’s second powerhouse and a major player in the union field, where it accounts for a third of the market. This was reaffirmed by Veronafiere in the presentation of Vinitaly 2024 at the EU Parliament in Brussels, a choice, said President Federico Bricolo, waiting for the sector to return to confront Italian government representatives, who, as always, will be in Verona (where, from WineNews rumors, Premier Giorgia Meloni is expected to be present), to emphasize, in the face of the “various factors that, between geopolitical, market and consumption crises, climate and health, threaten a strategic capital of made in Italy and made in the EU, that wine is economy, culture, tradition and sustainability, it creates wealth not only for companies but well-being for entire communities and territories, preserving them, making them attractive for tourism and handing them over to new generations. And which is an exceptional booster for exports, a forerunner for the internationalization of the whole food industry”. Internationalization that is Vinitaly’s role in promoting wine in the markets, since the first event in 1998 in China, where, in recent days, Vinitaly Chengdu No. 10 closed. Also to respond “to the need for proprietary events abroad”, stressed Maurizio Danese, CEO Veronafiere, “30 million investments are planned in Veronafiere’s new strategic plan One 2024-2026. Starting with Vinitaly USA (Chicago, October 20-21), the largest ever exhibition of Italian wine in America, a new piece of an exhibition puzzle that includes Asia (Wine to Asia) and South America (Wine South America) and events in key markets with government, Ministries of Agriculture and Made in Italy, Embassies and Ice, to establish “door-to-door” relationships that will bring to Verona 1,200 buyers from 65 countries, a record (+20% over 2023 with an Ice-Veronafiere investment of 3 million), and worth 95% of exports”. | |
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| | The world’s organic vineyard reached the figure of 562,000 hectares in 2022, 8.3% of the total area under vine, with Italy obviously playing a leading role with 127,638 hectares, 18.1% of its total vineyard (and 22.7% worldwide, ed.), and of these 103,576 hectares are converted. This is stated in “The World of Organic Agriculture - Statistics and Emerging Trends” 2024, the report published by the Organic Agriculture Research Institute Fibl with the international organization Ifoam, a benchmark for organic agriculture. Italy ranks third in terms of organic vineyard area, behind France (157,358 hectares) and Spain (149,934) the three “bigs” that add up to almost all the “green” vineyards on the globe. Far behind, in fact, are China, the United States, Germany, Austria, Argentina, Turkey and Chile. | |
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| | | It generates wealth in many rural areas, preserves them from depopulation, protects and encourages biodiversity, and contributes to taxation and employment in important ways. The value of wine to the European Union is enormous. And if in poetic words the genius of the late Philippe Daverio described it well long ago, according to which “Europe is the home of wine culture, the first distinctive element of being European”, as he recounted in an interview with WineNews, there are those who have put it down in numbers, such as Ceev, the European Committee of Wine Enterprises, with a study conducted by PwC, presented in recent days in Brussels (which WineNews anticipated) that quantified the wine sector’s impressive socioeconomic and environmental contribution to the EU. With nearly 3 million jobs and a contribution of 130 billion euros to GDP in 2022, or 0.8% of the total, and 52 billion euros in taxes (0.7% of public spending), the wine sector plays a key role in the socioeconomic sustainability of rural areas in the EU, the study explained. Record numbers, but there is no shortage of difficulties, including inflation, climate change, declining consumption and aging consumers, as explained by Ceev Secretary General Ignacio Sanchez Recarte to WineNews (in more detail).
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| | | The forecasts, not favorable, of the 2023 grape harvest in Italy were well known but, now, there are also the official data (sent by the Ministry of Agriculture to Dg Agri) certifying how it was the poorest since the “Post-World War II” with “only” 38.3 million hectoliters with a 23.2% drop compared to 2022. A figure, this, in line with what was predicted at the end of November by the Assoenologi Observatory, Ismea and the Unione italiana vini. In Europe, France, which closed the harvest with 48.1 million hectoliters (up), surpassed Italy as the leading producer. | |
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| | As it was easy to imagine from the latest developments, Renzo Rosso, with his Red Circle Investments, is exiting the capital of Masi Agricola, reselling his 10% to the Boscaini brothers (who now hold 27.83% of the shares each, while 7.56% is held by the Enpaia Foundation and the rest on the market, ed.), and putting an end to the disputes of recent times, so much so that they ended their relationship with a charitable initiative in support of an organization chosen together. This was announced in a joint official note, which arrived in recent days, following the BoD’s approval of the 2023 consolidated results, “which show revenues at 66.4 million (+2%), substantially in line with pre-covid (2019). 2023 was weighed down by the trend of stock easing in key markets and the slowdown in consumption. Markets still very cautious in early 2024”. | |
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| | 502.8 million liters (-2.1%), for 2.2 billion euros (+3.5%) compared to 2022: is the result to the export of Italian sparkling wines in 2023, which, therefore, fare better in value, but worse in quantity out of total Italian wine (at 7.7 billion euros in value, -0.8%, and 2.1 billion liters in volume, -0.9%), of which Italian sparkling wines, by now, are worth just under a quarter in volume, and just over 25% in value, out of total Italian wine shipments worldwide. Picture emerging from a WineNews in-depth study of Istat data. | |
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