“Cantina Italia”: stocks at 59.5 million hectoliters of wine in December 2025 (+4.4% on 2024)

Italian wine closed a complicated 2025, partly due to a now well-established fact: high stock levels in cellars. A significant increase compared to 2024, which can be attributed to varying harvest volumes (very poor in 2023, more generous in 2024, and even more abundant in 2025), but obviously also influenced, quite heavily, by sluggish sales and consumption, the health-conscious trend, the burden of U.S. tariffs, and the economic difficulties that many producers are experiencing firsthand. The December 2025 figure, the final one for the just ended year, shows overall wine stocks still rising, as reported in the update on December 31st, 2025 of “Cantina Italia”, prepared by Icqrf, the central inspectorate for quality protection and fraud prevention of agri-food products, basing on data from the electronic wine registers published by the Ministry of Agriculture, according to which, in Italian wineries, there are 59.5 million hectoliters of wine in stock (much more than an “average harvest”), +11.6% compared to November 30th, 2025, and +4.4% compared to December 31st, 2024.
To this figure, 7.7 million hectoliters of must and 2.8 million hectoliters of new wine still fermenting (Vnaif) have to be added. And, compared to December 31st, 2024, stock levels are higher not only for wine but also for must (+16.8%) and Vnaif (+32.3%), categories, however, which show lower stocks compared to November 30th, 2025 (-20.2% for must and -70.1% for Vnaif).
And, if on November 30th, 2025, as analyzed by WineNews from the comparison of data across denominations of “Cantina Italia”, all of the top 10 largest denominations in terms of wine “stocks” saw their inventories increase over the past year, with the sole exception of IGP Puglia (though the trend affects nearly all regions), in the latest Icqrf update, 58.6% of the wine is stocked in northern regions, mainly Veneto (27.3%); 54.2% is PDO (27.7% white wine, 25% red wine, 1.5% rosé wine), 26.4% is PGI (13.9% red wine, 11.4% white wine, 1% rosé wine), varietal wines account for just 1.6% of the total, while 17.9% falls under other categories. Stocks of wines with Geographical Indication are highly concentrated: 20 denominations out of 531 account for 58.4% of total stocks.
Prosecco PDO alone represents 12.2% of stocks with 5.8 million hectoliters, followed by IGP Puglia (2 million hectoliters, 4.3% of the total), IGP Toscana (1.75 million hectoliters, 3.7% of the total), DOC Delle Venezie (1.72 million hectoliters), IGP Terre Siciliane (1.71 million hectoliters), IGP Veneto (1.6 million hectoliters), DOC Sicilia (1.5 million hectoliters), IGP Salento (1.4 million hectoliters), Chianti DOCG (1.39 million hectoliters), and IGP Rubicone (1.3 million hectoliters).