Chianti, the “pop” denomination that conquers young people and wine industry

Despite the danger of duties - defused only two days ago by the decision of the Ustr, which once again saved wine and food made in Italy from the list of products affected by duties in the quarrel between the U.S. and the EU related to public aid to Airbus-, the Brexit that will take Great Britain definitively out of the European common market and the threat that looms over the world of a real pandemic, the Corona virus, which is slowing down trade flows to China, Italian wine exports continue to grow, and in the first 11 months of 2019 the turnover of wine abroad reaches 5.92 billion euros (+2.8%). Even better than the average is Chianti which, as the president of the Consortium Giovanni Busi told WineNews from “Chianti Lovers”, the preview of the 2019 vintage of Chianti Docg, on stage in Florence, “has linked its growth to the domestic market, which is worth 30% of turnover and which, in 2019, grew by 6.3% in volume and 7.3% in value. Important numbers, which comfort us in the work we are carrying out, because it means that the companies, on the one hand, have managed to produce wines that meet the demands of the market - and therefore the quality level of Chianti has increased - and, on the other hand, that the communication is chosen to promote the companies and the denomination manages to reach an ever wider and younger audience, which approaches the world of wine by being captured by Chianti”.
It is precisely the young wine lovers at home, the most difficult to reach and retain, thus, to guide the evolution of what we can define, in the highest sense of the term, the most “popular” denomination of the wine country, able to conquer the Millennials, attracted by wines “ready to drink”, but not for this reason trivial, at affordable prices even for the youngest. At the base, however, there is a precise communication strategy, on which Chianti has begun to invest with “a project that began ten years ago - President Giovanni Busi still remembers - when we stopped to ask ourselves what the problems of Chianti were: on the one hand, quality decidedly unsuitable for the current market, on the other hand, very strict rules and an image that had lost its glaze. We started with the logo, putting the appellation in the background and using the word “Chianti”, which has become our logo: the “C”, turning it around, becomes a smiley face, a message addressed to young people - continues Busi - to try to speak a new language that is appropriate to the world of wine. It was the biggest job we did, so we spurred the companies to renew their vineyards, and today 75% of the Chianti vineyard is renewed, and this means having immediately a different and better quality than the old vineyards, reducing production costs and increasing the production potential - concludes the president of the Chianti Consortium - thus being able to present itself on the markets with greater ease”.