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Issue 711 - December 9th - 13th 2024 - Expressly created for 4884 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world | |
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| | | Italian wine exports in the first nine months of 2024 touched 5.9 billion euros, up 5.6% over the same period in 2023. Volumes are also in positive territory with 1.6 billion liters, +3.4% compared to 12 months ago. A track record fueled more and more by the exploit of sparkling wines that arrived at the end of the third quarter 2024 at 1.7 billion euros in export value, an improvement of 9.4% over the same period 2023, with bubbles worth 28.7% of Italian wine exports worldwide. This is the picture that comes from Istat data, on the first 9 months of the year, analyzed by WineNews. | |
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| | A 2024 played forcibly on the defensive, amidst a thousand difficulties, but not a rout, at least until November, hoping for a recovery in the always decisive period of the end-of-year holidays, which is unlikely, however, to bring all indicators into the positive, but which could help limit even more the damage related to declining consumption, healthiness, inflation and so on: this is the possible reading of Circana’s data on the first 11 months of wine in Italian large-scale retail, analyzed by WineNews. Overall, there was a drop in volume for the category, but all in all it was contained at -1.7%, for more than 565.7 million liters, offset by a hold in value, at 2.05 billion euros, with +1.8% growth. Within this overall picture, however, the decline in still wines (especially reds) is confirmed, and the growth in sparkling wines, as has been the case for years. Bottled wine, which is worth more than half of the volumes and more than 75% of the values sold, in fact, overall held up in volume (-0.2%, to 298.9 million liters), and grew 2.4% in value, to 1.57 billion euros. But it is growth all attributable to bubbles, which made +3.8% in volume (over 81 million liters) to 548.5 million euros (+3.5%). Of these, 37.5 million liters (+4%) are from Prosecco, which moved a turnover of 284.5 million euros (+2.8%), but also growing is Metodo Classico, which in the Italian large-scale retail sector turned over 3.9 million liters (+2.1%) for 78.2 million euros (+5.3%). Between the lines, however, there is apparently a consumer tendency to favor lower-priced wines than in the past, as volumes are down in Iper and Supermarkets and Small Free Service (-3.2%, for 385.3 million liters, for wine as a whole and -1.2% for wine in 0.75-liter format, to 217.4 million liters), while they are growing in the Discount channel (+1.5%, to 180.3 million liters, for wine as a whole, and +2.6% for wine in 0.75-liter bottles, to 80 million liters). And if this is the state of the art in the first 11 months of 2024, it is difficult to expect revolutions in the scenario from the end-of-year festivities, as Virgilio Romano, Circana Business Insight Director, explains to WineNews (in more detail). | |
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| | Fattoria La Parrina is in the heart of Maremma. 200 hectares of land, 60 of which are vineyards, but also much more, including production of fruit, vegetables, cheeses, olive groves, arable land, nurseries, pasture, wine tourism, hospitality, catering and more. A reality born at the end of the nineteenth century, and developed, in the last decades by Marchioness Francesca Spinola, who will now continue her journey joined by one of the most important names in Italian wine, Marchesi Antinori. Which, as was in the air for some time, has taken over the majority, more for family relations, which bind the Antinori and Spinola families, than for a “business project,” Renzo Cotarella, CEO Marchesi Antinori, explains to WineNews, and to give an “affective continuity” to an agricultural project based on organic and circular economy. In which wine, this time, is not the focus, but an “of which,” albeit an important one. | |
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| | | New and old uncertainties affect the wine world, which has gone through a 2024 of ups and downs, with a global slowdown in consumption, and now faces inflation, wars, healthism, changing consumption, and climate change. But “in my career I have experienced many phases of crisis in the wine world. All of them have been overcome. This one will be too. The elements of concern and difficulty are many for the sector, but Italian wine has grown so much in quality, and there are so many markets in the world yet to be discovered and conquered. We must have confidence in the values of this product and believe in the future”. This is the thought, to WineNews, of Piero Antinori, the noble father of the Italian wine renaissance, for decades at the helm of Marchesi Antinori, a leading reality in Italian wine. A message taken up, in recent days, in the “I Colloqui dell’Economia” of the Florence Chamber of Commerce (with many topics touched upon, in more detail). Antinori, on the drop in wine consumption that is being experienced, a bit everywhere, in these months, is optimistic: “It is a momentary trend. Consumers’ tastes are evolving, and they will be increasingly oriented toward wines characterized by elegance and finesse, characteristics that Tuscany can offer”. | |
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| | | A driving force for exports, a bulwark of domestic wine consumption, Italian sparkling wines are about to touch the record of 1.015 billion bottles produced and marketed in 2024 (+8% over 2023); of these, 355 million (+7%) will be uncorked between Christmas and New Year’s in Italy (104, +2%) and worldwide (251, +9%). A record, reports the Wine Observatory Unione Italiana Vini - Uiv and Ismea in the usual year-end report, which demonstrates the strength of a type refractory to economic crises, conflicts and difficulties now structural in the sector. | |
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| | Collio is a historic land of wine, especially great whites, in the heart of Friuli Venezia Giulia. But it is also the cradle of the increasingly appreciated phenomenon that is macerated wines and “orange wines”, which until now, however, could not in fact tell their own story as Doc Collio, in which, nevertheless, they are born, and of which they are an identifying and characterizing expression, albeit still small. But, soon, they will be able to do so, because the Collio Wines Consortium has approved the inclusion of the specification “Wine from macerated grapes” in the Doc Collio specification, thus welcoming under the denomination’s hat a production peculiarity that will also lead to an improvement in quality for all, as well as adding a new communicative key for the territorial brand. | |
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| | As of November 30, 2024, there were 49.1 million hectoliters of wine in stock in Italian wineries, -7.7% compared to November 30, 2023. This figure is significant because it comes, in fact, when the harvest is completely finished and therefore with the “actual” quantities in storage in the cellars. To this figure must be added the 8.6 million hectoliters of must (-2.2% over the same period 2023) and the 9.5 million hectoliters of new wine still in fermentation (Vnaif), at +13.2%. This is according to the latest “Cantina Italia” report, compiled by Icqrf. With “stocks” that, therefore, remain high. | |
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