Wine bars: promoters of wine culture. 7.209 in Italy, and non-stop growth over the past 5 years

Italian wine bars are growing at a very fast rate as places to go to drink, to meet and spend time with friends, where wine is often accompanied by food, and have now been established as a pillar not only for the market, but also for wine culture. The wine shop is no longer a place for simply a wine seller, but rather one who tries to understand the customer and advise them. In an increasingly crowded sector of wines, they may also help wine fans discover new wines and producers, wine goodies and novelties. And, all of this seems to have brought Italians back to the wine bars, pillars of local wine culture, because after years of talking about the crisis, their numbers have started to grow again. There are 7.209 wine bars in In Italy, 4% more than 5 years ago. And, this growing phenomenon is found on all the Italian territories, starting from the Lombardy Region, where there are 982 of them, according to the Chamber of Commerce of Monza Brianza Lodi and Coldiretti study. As far as Italian cities go, Rome takes first place at 345 wine bars, the result of 35% growth over ten years, followed by Naples in second place, at 221 wine bars. Milan, the city that has become the country’s food and wine capital, after the Expo Fair, is in third place, at 141wine bars. Milan has also been confirmed the most dynamic for wine bars that grew + 5% in the last year, and 72% over a 10-year period. The other cities in the top ten include Turin (121 wine bars), Florence (91), Genoa (80), Venice (68), Palermo (62), Bologna (57) and Bari (50). One of the most interesting facts to come out of the study were the “pink quotas”, and the wine sector, in general, saw an increase in the number of women at the helm of businesses, from wineries to wine shops: more than one in four wine bars (26.5%) are run by women. The “youth sector”, instead, is definitely smaller, as only 11% of the wine bars in Italy are run by young people. At the provincial level, Naples is the best stocked (528, + 3% in 5 years), ahead of Rome (480, +3%) and Milan (259, + 9%), which is the most dynamic. Meanwhile, professionals in the wine world have put the present and future role of wine bars at the center of a profound discussion. At Vinexpo Paris, the principal Italian organizations, Vinarius and AEPI - Association of Italian and French Professional Wine Shop Merchants, or the Fédération des Cavistes Indépendants and the Syndicat des cavistes professionnels, have discussed the topic in a conference with a more than eloquent title: “Wine shop merchants, suppliers of art and culture”.