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Issue 689 - July 8th - 12th 2024 - Expressly created for 4816 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world | |
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| | | That wine tourism is something strong and of growing appeal, in Italy, is told by the numbers that speak of 14 million tourists for a turnover of 2.5 billion euros. This is also the case for the Lake Garda area (we speak of 27 million tourists a year), an area in which Lugana Doc, one of the white excellence of Italy, is located. Here the Lugana Consortium has activated the “Wine Tourism Project”, given that wine tourism is a central asset of the economic system: surveys say that direct sales are worth 15% of companies’ turnovers, with some peaks reaching 25 % (national average is 8 %). | |
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| | “The difficulties are there, but wine is not in crisis. We are not asking for welfarism, but for recognition of the value of our sector, which creates wealth and GDP, in Italy as in Europe, where wine employs 3 million people, and generates 130 billion of gross domestic product, 1.1% of the European total. We ask the Italian government to be strong in the EU, in a new Europe from which we expect more unity of purpose between Parliament and the European Commission, for an EU that has a world leadership role, and counts at least as much as the U.S. and Brics. We ask to invest in a CMO that helps to develop the market, after we reached an export of 7.8 billion euros in 2023, as Italian wine, but with 62% of the total concentrated in 5 markets, a plateau that needs to be expanded. We need more speed in some responses, we ask for strategic and clear choices, such as on the overused issue of sustainability, which is very important, but to which we must give substance”. This is the course to be charted for the future of Italian wine, according to Lamberto Frescobaldi, president of Unione Italiana Vini - Uiv, at the assembly in Rome, in the presence, among others, of the Ministers of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida (with whom he shares the “no” to the explantation of vineyards and to financing them with public funds, and the work that will begin shortly to define things on the issue of alcohol-free wines, as well as the need for businesses and institutions to work together against the unacceptable phenomenon of illegal recruitment, in more detail), and of Economy, Giancarlo Giorgetti, as well as the heads of Veronafiere-Vinitaly, with President Federico Bricolo, Ice, with President Matteo Zoppas, Confagricoltura, with Massimiliano Giansanti, and Coldiretti, with Ettore Prandini. A difficult course to chart, in a world that has changed, and that today is experiencing a sort of new “year zero”, after having experienced a pandemic, and while there are so many wars going on, on the borders of a West that thought it had overcome forever issues that, instead, cyclically return and will return, and that need to be addressed, and with a new world balance all to be deciphered, but that no longer has the U.S. (first wine market, ed.) as a pivot. | |
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| | In the wine market, some good signs for 2024 are coming from Asia. According to the Oemv (Observatorio Espanol del Mercado del Vino), China imported 3.6% more in the first quarter of 2024, almost 60 million liters. An increase in volume that is not matched by that of the value of purchases, which fell 6.4% (just over 224,000 euros, while Italy makes +8.6%, Istat data), a much smaller drop, however, than 2023 (-15.2%), and with March 2024 (+1.7%) breaking a streak of 6 consecutive months of declines. From China to Japan, with Tokyo reducing its wine imports by 10% in the first quarter of 2024, to 49.6 million liters and 50,950 million yen (291,000 euros, with Italy at +8%, ed.), at an average price 1.6% higher, and thus at 1,026 yen/liter (5.9 euros, ed.). It was the worst first quarter in volume since 2011, but the second best in value after 2023. | |
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| | | If at least from exports some positive signs are coming, with a growth of more than +3% in both value and volume in the first quarter of 2024 over 2023, according to Istat data, and in the away-from-home sector there is, thanks to the summer, some desire for recovery, in large-scale distribution, the real thermometer of wine consumption in Italy, with a share of total volumes ranging between 60% and 70% of the total, things are not going well in this first half of 2024. With the exception of sparkling wines, which have resumed their run after the small setback of 2023. This is the picture from Circana data, analyzed by WineNews, on wine sales between large-scale distribution, discount stores and related e-commerce on the first half of the year. Overall, the figure is negative, with volumes at -1.9% (315.4 million liters) over the same period 2023, although values are up +1.4% (to €1.1 billion), and prices +3.3% (€3.57 per liter), but substantially due to inflation-related list price increases rather than a shift to higher quality product ranges, as evidenced, moreover, by the -4.3% in volume and +0.5% in value when looking at the volumes of Iper and Super Markets and Liberto Servizio Piccolo, which contrast with the +4% in volume and +5.7% in value of discount stores. | |
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| | | Istat data on the first 3 months of 2024 speak of a +2.2% in value for Italian exports to the States. But overall consumption, in the most important American market, continues to decline. The balance of the first 5 months based on warehouse orders from horeca and large retailers marks -8% overall sales and -6% for products from the Belpaese, which suffers, but does better than competitors such as France, the United States, Australia and Spain. This is according to the analysis of the Uiv-Vinitaly Observatory based on SipSource (in more detail). | |
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| | The best sweet wine in the world? It comes from Italy and it’s Tenuta di Capezzana’s Vin Santo di Carmignano Riserva 2016, once again the category “champion” at the prestigious “International Wine Challenge” 2024 in London, an event that crossed the finish line of edition No. 40 and awarded prizes to producers from 38 countries around the world. Italy, with 337 medals, finished fifth in the medal table, but winning, again, in the “sweet” category thanks to the historic Tenuta of the Contini Bonacossi family, custodian of Carmignano production, and beating the competition in the “Iwc Sweet Wine” thanks to its Vin Santo, which defended a title it had already won three times, in 2022, 2021 and 2019. At the overall level, France took home four of the top 10 awards between “Champion Wines” and “Winemaker”. | |
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| | The one related to the wine sector is a dynamic and flexible job market, in which transitions from one company to another are quite frequent, but overall rather closed, with “barriers” to entry and a tendency on the part of employers to focus on professionals already belonging to the sector and with previous experience, rather than on new entry figures: this is what emerges from the survey carried out by WineJob, an agency specializing in recruiting, training and consulting, and Game2Value, an innovative videogame assessment platform for human resources. | |
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