Bulk prices stable in the first quarter of 2019. Prosecco and organic doing well in Italy

Numbers at hand, bulk products represent a minority share of the world wine trade. This is not so much for the volumes they move as for, instead, values. Nonetheless, the bulk wine trend is the one that, better than any other, is able to predict times and trends of the international wine sector. The Ciatti Company, one of the largest bulk wine brokers in the world, published the numbers relating to the first three months of 2019, which have been analyzed in Rabobank’s “Wine Quarterly Q2 2019”. The numbers have revealed that prices, at the global level, seem to have reached stability, even though there is a total lack of uniformity in terms of quality and availability. Therefore, Argentinean wine prices, for instance, have continued to fall and are currently at around 30 cents per liter, taking into consideration an especially abundant harvest as well. On the other hand, even though expectations point towards a rather scarce harvest in Chile, the values of Chilean bulk products still remain over 50 cents per liter. The prices of Australian wine, one of the largest exporters of bulk wines in the world, are also stable, due to an anticipated scarce harvest, just like in South Africa and New Zealand, where predictions are all now on a downhill slide, compared to the earlier forecasts.
The analysis is slightly different in Europe because both the typology and origin of the product have an unquestionably greater specific weight. Nevertheless, prices from Italy and Spain, the main bulk suppliers of the Old World, remain stable, at around 50 cents per liter.They have different dynamics, though. In Spain, generic wines boast primarily competitive prices, but the organic varieties are the ones that push up the average values. Whereas in Italy, the white wines bring the prices down because of the exceptional level of production in the Northern Regions, which makes prices fall to just over 40 cents per liter. The price rise for Prosecco and organic wines is directly related to the great demand for these two categories. French bulk wine prices are also stable, but are based on a qualitatively quite varied harvest, and present very different trends. Bordeaux wines, for instance, are paying for the drop in Chinese demand.