Wine in the shopping cart: sales are up +6.2% in value and +4.8% in volume since January 2020

Outside the home eating and drinking has come to a full stop for almost two months now, restaurants are closed, and even wine is feeling the crunch - in Italy, in Europe and all over the world. According to CEEV, Comité Européen des Entreprises Vins, estimates, since the hotel restaurant sector has been closed, the wine market has lost 50% in value. This enormous drop has mainly affected wineries that invested in greater added value products and their predominant, if not also unique, channel is the catering sector. There is some positive news as mentioned above, from increases in sales for domestic consumption, at least in Italy, thanks to the e-commerce boom that started with very small numbers and then, however, throughout March has seen double-digit growth, especially from large retailers.

The result of this trend is that in the first three months of 2020, wine sales in Italian large retailers (hypermarkets and supermarkets, and mini-markets, i.e., between 100 and 400 square meters, ed.) totaled more than 434 million euros, 6.2% growth in value in 2019, compared to 4.8% growth in volume (also in 2019). These figures come from IRI data, which WineNews analyzed, and show how growth, compared to a quite flat February and a rather positive January, is mainly due to the +9.7% in volume registered in March 2020. Wine in bottles has registered 6.7% increase in volume overall, and the merit is mainly PDO wines (+ 9.9%). There has also been substantial growth in other quality and convenience formats, such as brick (+8, 8%) and, especially bag-in-box wines that last month registered a formidable +36.8% growth.

The bubbles sector, instead, deserves a separate discussion. In general, since the beginning of the year, sparkling wines have grown +13.2% in volume, but have registered the opposite trend of still wines; that is, huge double-digit growth in January and February, and a setback (-5.4%) in March. The setback, though, is primarily linked "only" to the classic method (-14.9% in March) and sweet Charmat (-34.4%). As a matter of fact, Prosecco (since the beginning of the year, in large retail stores, has registered + 21.1% growth), following double-digit growth in January (+ 25.9%) and February (32%) continued to grow in Italian shopping carts also in March (+8.3%).