Red wines are suffering and Tuscany confirms it: bottlings at -8% in October 2023 (Avito data)

The negative trend continues, on the market, for Italian red wines, which slow down sales and increase stocks in the cellar. A trend in line with a period conditioned by the inflationary push and therefore by an objective decline in consumer purchasing power, but weighing in the overall balance are also changing habits. A picture that seems to match the situation in Tuscany, one of Italy’s most important wine regions with its prestigious reds.
Reading data from the Tuscan Wines Association (Avito), which brings together all the wine consortia in the region, regarding bottlings and bands, which, if not a millimeter-accurate snapshot of the market, give, however, a reliable indication of what comes out of the cellars and ends up on the shelves of distribution and catering, in Italy and around the world, overall, from January 1 to October 31, 2023, just over 1.5 million hectoliters were placed on the market, a drop of 8% (over the same period 2022). There is no shortage of (few) exceptions, such as Vernaccia di San Gimignano with 33,650 hectoliters (+5%), Maremma Toscana, at 45,764 hectoliters (+5%), which, however, is seeing an increase in the weight of a white grape variety such as Vermentino. Numbers are also up for other appellations that are nevertheless small in terms of volume, such as Val d’Arno di Sopra (+48%, 934 hectoliters), Orcia (+20%, 2,055 hectoliters), and Pomino (+12%, 3,853 hectoliters).
But dominating are the declines involving, in different ways, the other major appellations. Bottlings of the great Igt Toscana slowed by -11% (for 560,977 hectoliters), slight decline for Chianti at -3% (488,005 hectoliters), with the negative sign not sparing even Chianti Classico, at -15% (194,817 hectoliters). Moving to Montalcino, the drop is both for the queen appellation, Brunello di Montalcino (-6% for 57,365 hectoliters) and Rosso di Montalcino (-15% at 24,053 hectoliters); as well as in Montepulciano, with Vino Nobile at -11% (40,229 hectoliters) and Rosso di Montepulciano at -7% (16,429 hectoliters). Bolgheri is also down 11% (45,505 hectoliters), while Morellino di Scansano shows a smaller decrease, -3% (47,039 hectoliters), with Montecucco, on the other hand, doing -35% (4,857 hectoliters).
Volume data, and not values, but which, nonetheless, return a snapshot of a suboptimal moment for the sector. Which, without giving in to alarmism, but also without putting its head in the sand, must reflect on the evolution of a market that, due to a thousand factors, mainly external to the sector itself, but, nonetheless, influential, is changing rapidly.