Italian wineries stock less wine than in 2019 while table wine stocks plummet

There were 49.5 million hectoliters of wine in stock in Italian wineries as of May 21, 2020, meaning they have dropped -1.5% compared to last May 14th (742.408 hectoliters less), and stocks have decreased 3.5% compared to May 15, 2019, when, instead, the total amount of stocks was 51.3 million hectoliters. This is the most recent snapshot taken from the latest “Cantina Italia” bulletin, edited by the Ministry of Agriculture. The bulletin reports that stocks of Denomination wines (25.9 million hectoliters) are essentially at the same level as last year (+0.8 %), while table wines, instead, have plummeted radically, from 11.5 million hectoliters on May 15, 2019 to 9.9 million hectoliters today (-14.4%).
As far as territories are concerned, 58% of Italian wines are physically stored in the northern regions. There is about one quarter of the national wine (24.9%), in Veneto alone, mainly thanks to the significant contribution of the stocks of the provinces of Treviso (10%) and Verona (9%), which hold more wine (9.6 million hectoliters) than Apulia and Sicily added together (8.0 million hectoliters). Following Veneto, the Emilia Romagna Region stocks 5.6 million hectoliters in the cellar, slightly more than Tuscany (5.59 million hectoliters), and then Apulia (4.9 million hectoliters), Piedmont (4.1 million hectoliters) and Sicily (3 million hectoliters). More than half the wine (52.4%) is PDO, and there is a prevalence of reds (53.1%), whereas 26.2% of the wine is PGI, also in this case a prevalence of reds (55.8%), while stocks of varietal wines make up just 1.4% of the total. The remaining 20% ​​is made up of other wines. Despite the large number of Appellations, (526), ​​actually 10 constitute 40% of the total wines of denominations in the cellar, and the top 20 appellations represent more than half of the total (56.2%). To go into further detail, Prosecco represents 8.7% of all the PDO and PGI wine stored in Italian cellars (3.4 million hectoliters), the Apulia and Tuscan PGIs stored count 3.9% each (1.5 million hectoliters), the Sicilian PGI and PDO Terre Siciliane stock 3.5% each (1.4 million hectoliters). The Veneto PGI 3.4%, which is the same also for the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and Chianti PDO, all stock 1.3 million hectoliters. Furthermore, the PDO delle Venezie represents 3.2% of the stored wine (1.2 million hectoliters), Chianti Classico 2.1% (825.000 hectoliters), Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco 1.9% (756.000 hectoliters), Valpolicella Ripasso 1.4% (562.000 hectoliters),
Franciacorta (541.000 hectoliters), and Barolo 1.3% (520.000 hectoliters). 27.6% of PDO and PGI wine is stored in the wineries of the Veneto Region, 13.3% in Tuscany, and 8.3% in the wineries in Apulia.
We must add the 4.96 million hectoliters of musts to this list of stocks, which are mainly stored in the Northern (51%) and Southern Italian Regions (38%). Apulia is in first place (36.2%), followed by Emilia Romagna (23.1%). Finally, the new wines still in fermentation, total 145.510 hectoliters, and are distributed 32.7% in the South, 28.9% in the Center, 27.5% in the North and the remaining 10.9% in the Islands.