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Issue 437 - September 9th - 13th 2019 - Expressly created for 11.897 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world |
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It is one of the most beautiful harvests in the world: the harvest of grapes from the rows of the Agrigento Valley, with the Greek temples in the background, is a spectacle that is repeated every year, in a combination of viticulture, art and archaeology, made possible by the historic collaboration between the Parco Archeologico e Paesaggistico Della Valle Dei Templi and the Cooperativa Viticultori Associati of Canicattì: from the 4 hectares cultivated under the Tempio di Giunone, in Nero d’Avola, Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio, the 6,000 bottles of “Diodoros - the Wine of the Valley” are produced. |
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In 1982, the Italy of Enzo Bearzot and Paolo Rossi won the “Mundial” in Spain, while an American journalist, Burton Anderson, published “Vino. The Wines & Winemakers of Italy”, in fact, the first international book that shone the light on the international markets, USA and UK in the lead, but not only, on an Italy of wine that was unknown, and which, driven by a few great wine families and by some artisans, began its revolution, or rather its wine “Renaissance”. A fundamental contribution, that of Burton Anderson, awarded today in Florence in Palazzo Antinori by the Istituto Grandi Marchi led by Piero Mastroberardino, in a meeting, moderated by journalist Daniele Cernilli, divided between memories and prospects. How much Italian wine has changed, “first of all thanks to the fact that it has focused on quality”, have said to one voice producers that the “Renaissance” of wine have lived as protagonists, from Piero Antinori, at the head of the Marchesi Antinori, to “Mr. Amarone” Sandro Boscaini (Masi Agricola), Angelo Gaja, say the numbers. In the face of almost unchanged world consumption (240 million hectolitres at the end of the 1980s, 246 in 2018), Italy has gone from 12.6 to 19.5 million hectolitres exported, and especially from 919 million euros to over 6.2 billion euros in value, changing not only the quantities, but the composition of its exports, as explained by Denis Pantini (Nomisma): “at the end of the 1980s, Italy exported practically one-third of what it consumed internally, while now, one of the two bottles produced has been exported. Until 30 years ago, moreover, more than half of our exports were tied to bulk wine, while today the latter weighs only 20% in quantity and 5% in value. Concerning the destination markets, if the European Union area was once the first destination for Italy, with Germany playing the lion’s share, by now the centre of gravity has shifted to other markets, the United States in the lead, where our country recorded a 230% increase in the total quantity of wine exported from 1990 to 2018”. |
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The controversy over the name “Prosecco” has split opinions, as well as its use or not, or better yet its possible future abandonment, by the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore Docg, the historical territory of the Prosecco galaxy, where some players believe that, after the birth of the DOC in 2009, and after the worldwide success, the term “Prosecco” as such flattens the differences between the sparkling wine produced in the hills, the DOCG, and that of the plain, or that of the DOC. A hypothesis that producers do not like, such as Carpenè Malvolti, Bortolomiol, Nino Franco, Bisol and Adami. “The DOCG has every right to decide on its name. But it has risen from 60 million in 2009 to over 90 million bottles today. The growth of the DOC has also favored the DOCG”. |
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“I am optimistic about the future of Italian wine, because we have really accomplished a lot, but we have not reached the final goal yet. There is always room for improvement, both quality-wise as well as boosting our product, especially on foreign markets, the emerging ones, such as China”. These are the words of Piero Antinori, at the helm of Marchesi Antinori winery, which has contributed to the history of Italian wine in the past 30 years. The wine “Renaissance” that took Italian wine from being considered a low-priced and low-quality product, to an excellent product. “It was a brief period, but because of many factors, the process was gradual”, Piero Antinori explained to WineNews. “First of all, there is the improved quality of our products, because quality is always at the base of everything”. The valorization of Italian wine, and its better price positioning, according to Antinori, is one of the most important challenges for the Italian wine future. This is also because margins are still important, considering that in the USA , reference market of Italian wine, and the value of one liter of exported Italian wine is 5.8 euros, while France is 9.6 dollars per liter (Nomisma data). |
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The Italy of fine wines grows in 2019. In the first two thirds of the year, in fact, according to the indices that measure the price trend on the sector benchmark, the platform of Liv-Ex, Italy 100, grew by 4.97%, while all others (with the exception of Champagne 50, to +1.87%), are down more or less. And even more significant is the performance of Italian labels year on year: from August 2018 to August 2019, the growth of Italy 100 was +9.7%, behind only the Burgundy 150, to +11.1%. |
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In 2019, Italy’s wine sector is preparing to exceed for the first time the 6 billion euro balance of trade balance structurally active, although in the first half of the year growth (+3.3%, to about 3 billion euro) is less vigorous than in the past, and the average price shows a significant decline, especially in the EU area. Sales in third countries that are subject to free trade agreements (Japan, Canada, South Korea) are growing, while the increase in the USA is lower than the market average and in China sparkling wines are appearing, the only type reported to be growing in the Dragon. This is the update on the wine market of the Osservatorio Vinitaly-Nomisma Wine Monitor, which analyzed the six-monthly Istat data on exports and those of customs relating to extra-EU demand in the first 7 months of 2019. |
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The picture is not positive, but alcoholic beverages are doing well, with sales (+3.5), according to data from the leader of large-scale distribution, Coop Italy. The wine weight is 40%, that of beer 32%, liqueurs 17%, sparkling wine and champagne 8% and aperitifs 3%. Sparkling wines, in a long-term period (2011-2018): +53.5% of purchases in large-scale distribution, followed by beer (+39.5%), still wines(+23.1%). |
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