If this message is not displayed correctly click here |
Issue 657 - November 27th - December 1st 2023 - Expressly created for 4633 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world | |
|
|
| | | From Castello di Gabiano to Mamete Prevostini, Marchesi Mazzei-Castello di Fonterutoli, Mastroberardino and Ceraudo “new entries” alongside Ferrari, Bellavista, Ca’ del Bosco, Ceretto, Fontanafredda, Malvirà, Badia a Coltibuono, San Felice, Castello Vicchiomaggio, Capezzana, Lungarotti, Masciarelli, Feudi di San Gregorio, Planeta, Donnafugata and Florio: here’s the top hospitality with “Tre Impronte” for the Go Wine guide “Cantine d’Italia” 2024, with 852 wineries, 262 with the “Impronta”, and “Finestre sul vino” for Richard Baudains of “Decanter”, Alessandro Regoli, WineNews director, and Alessandra Dal Monte of “Corriere della Sera-Cook”. | |
|
| | The wine market is experiencing a period of not particularly favorable and important changes, in which there is a reduction in wine consumption worldwide, including Italy, and a significant revision in purchasing behavior, according to a survey of end consumers by Nomisma’s Wine Monitor Observatory. With rising food and beverage prices (with wine up 3.1% in the last year), 6,700 euros per capita is lost from 2021 to the first half of 2023. In the first 9 months of 2023, wine sales in the Italian large-scale distribution contracted by more than 3% in volume, and Horeca, while registering positive trends, is slowing growth due to declining tourist and out-of-home flows. In the January-September 2023 period, retail recorded a value of wine sales of 65 billion euros, up on 2022 due to inflation, but still in the red in volume, although a -5.8% decline is beginning to be seen, due to a post-pandemic realignment. In large-scale distribution in value terms, Igp/Dop (-3.5%) and whites (-3.1%) perform better, while in discount stores the best trends concern whites and table wines (-2.9% and -2.3%) and especially rosés (+1.8% in volume and +7.8% in value). Sparkling wines are the only ones to grow in large-scale distribution even in volume, although driving sales are generic wines, which are characterized by a significant price differential on dry Charmat or Doc and Docg brands (-30%). 76% of Italians who drank wine in the past year did so at home, and only 24% in bars. And if among those who used to drink it at home, 1 out of 5 reduced or stopped consumption, outside the home 21% reduced consumption and 4% stopped drinking wine. Habits that, in the next 6 months, for 3 out of 4 will remain stable and only 5% will increase. And 24% plan to buy wine directly from producers and 9% online, for the price factor. These trends, however, do not affect all generations. The under-25s approach the world of wine in a completely different way than the generations that preceded them: they drink less, they do it mainly outside the home (38%) and in a mixed mode (75%), but they are also more attentive to sustainability and health aspects, denoting a strong interest in no and low alcohol wines.
| |
|
| | The 2023 vintage, for Italy in quantity, has gone even worse than expected (or rather, paradoxically, since the market is anything but growing). With the Assoenologi, Ismea and Unione Italiana Vini (Uiv) Observatory further revising downward the estimates from the beginning of September (pending the official data that will arrive from the Ministry of Agriculture in the coming weeks). And so, “it stops within a range between 38 and 40 million hectoliters, the Italian wine production 2023, with a contraction between -20% and -24%, net of any products upstream of the wine (such as musts, new wines in fermentation ...) purchased from other EU countries, instead of the -12% estimated in September”. | |
|
| | | Between the market that does not shine, the changing climate, changing regulations that often complicate things even more, such as on the delicate issue of labeling, through attacks by what, in no uncertain terms, are called the “anti-alcohol lobby”, wine, Italian and otherwise, is going through one of its most delicate and difficult phases ever. And it has to deal with “regular” consumers who are fewer and fewer, and with young people who are looking more and more to sparkling wines and less and less to still wines, especially reds. But also with the realization that wine is perhaps being produced too much and in too many places with little vocation for quality and distinctiveness of wines. Yet, the sector has overcome so many crises, and will be able to do so again, provided that every part of the supply chain, from the vineyard, to the winery, to the trade, to the institutions, play their part, synergistically. And, in this sense, “the presence, at the closing of our Congress No. 76, of Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, and of MEP Paolo De Castro, a member of the Agriculture Commission of the European Parliament, gives the measure of the weight gained over the years by enologists”. This is how Riccardo Cotarella, president of Assoenologi, closed the organization’s Congress (speeches in more detail). | |
|
| | | In 2022, the sold production of wine in the European Union was 16.1 billion liters. The top three producers - Italy, Spain and France - put together 83% of the total. Italy and Spain each contributed nearly 5 billion liters (with 62% of the total production sold in the European Union), while France produced 3.4 billion liters. Italy was also the leading European exporting country: these are the latest figures released by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office. | |
|
| | Ferrari Trento’s Giulio Ferrari Rosé Riserva TrentoDoc 2012 Extra Brut was named Italy’s best sparkling wine, while the two best whites come from Alto Adige, Terlaner’s Primo Grande Cuvée Terlaner 2020 and Castelfeder’s Kreuzweg Family Reserve Chardonnay Riserva 2019. Five, on the other hand, are the best red wines, namely Bartolo Mascarello’s Barolo, all 2019, Giuseppe Rinaldi’s Brunate and Poderi Aldo Conterno’s Romirasco, then Oasi degli Angeli’s Kupra Rosso Marche Igt 2020, and Petrolo’s Vigna Galatrona Merlot Val D’Arno di Sopra Doc 2021 in Tuscany. Fattoria Le Pupille’s RosaMati Toscana Rosato Igt 2022 and Masciarelli’s Villa Gemma Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo Superiore Doc 2022 are the best rosé wines, while the best sweet wine is Donnafugata’s Ben Ryè Passito di Pantelleria 2021: these are the best wines of Italy according to the “Vini Italia Guide 2024” by Falstaff.
| |
|
| | Italian wine conquers Paris: here is Signorvino’s store, in a building in the central Place Saint Michel, on three floors, in the heart of the Latin Quarter, which opened on December 1 (WineNews is there, and will report on it in a video, in the coming days). The wineshop chain founded by Sandro Veronesi, arrives in the “Ville Lumiere” with more than 2,000 labels from the “great Italian wine cellar”, for a glass of Italian wine, increasingly loved by the French (+20% exports in the first 8 months of 2023) a stone’s throw from Notre-Dame, along with the flavors of the Italian tradition. | |
|
|
|
