Wine market, impossible to make predictions. But consumption is turning to “cheaper” products

The difficulties of the wine market, in Italy and around the world, in these months are there for all to see, certified by a thousand voices and data. And if it is increasingly difficult to predict and plan for the future, at least as it was done until a few years ago, two seem to be the “certainties” to be reckoned with, at least for the near future. The growing importance of sustainability, and the work to be done on price positioning, especially abroad. Reflections that come from the data, communicated by Denis Pantini, director of the Agriculture and Food Industry Area and Head of Wine Monitor Nomisma Spa, in the “living room” of “Vinoway Selection 2024”, founded and directed by Davide Gangi, staged, in recent days, at Castello Monaci, winery of the Guppo Italiano Vini - Giv, in Puglia.
“Predictions cannot be made for the future market. From July/August 2023 there has been a -4% drop in sales over 2022”, said Nomisma Spa Wine Monitor Manager Denis Pantini, “and it would seem that the average consumer is buying less quality wine, replacing it with generic wine that costs less. And looking further ahead, Pantini stressed, "the data point to a demographic decline that will occur in Italy in the near future, and there will be a lower percentage of consumers to consider”.
And while sustainability is undoubtedly a value, “being sustainable has an economic cost. It is a greater cost that must be spent today in order to “pay less tomorrow”. But this sustainability, since we want to spend less today, are we really ready to spend it?” provoked Alessandro Rossi, Wine Manager Partesa, among the leading beverage and wine distribution companies in Italy. And speaking of sustainability, there is more to ponder about the underlying confusion between “sustainable” and “natural” when it comes to wine. And that comes back into the spotlight in a stronger way just after a 2023 grape harvest that came at the end of a vintage “such as has not occurred in 50 years”, said Assoenologi President Riccardo Cotarella, going back to emphasize how “the abundant spring rains allowed the proliferation of Oidium and Downy mildew diseases, quantitatively damaging the vineyards of most of Italy. Quality has not been compromised, but only the attention of science and professional knowledge accompanied by technique, become the only strategic-operational solutions that man can put into practice”. And if, as pointed out by Christian Scrinzi, oenologist of Gruppo Italiano Vini - Giv, and agronomist Gian Piero Romana, “careful and sustainable precision viticulture becomes the essential investment for the achievement of certain objectives”, on “natural wine” the considerations of Assoenologi president Riccardo Cotarella are clear. “Wine, naturally and without human intervention, leads to the production of vinegar; moreover, in Italy, it is not allowed to name and label wines with the term “natural”. They could be called “low man-made wines”, remembering, however, that it was science, thanks to man’s intervention, that discovered medicines for diseases that today are easily curable and that, in the past, led to death. The same system of organic cultivation allows intervention to support and protect production and the plant with specific phytosanitary products. The current goal remains to promote viticulture and oenology that is sustainable from a healthy and economic point of view”, Cotarella further stressed.
“There are so many aspects and figures in the world of wine. There are oenologists, professors, communicators, journalists, producers, commercial sector and so on ... What other agribusiness product is able to emotionally engage the human soul like wine? None. We have to nurture this consideration, despite the recent dastardly attacks by the European Union on wine and labeling regulations”, the president of Italian and world oenologists Riccardo Cotarella later said in the conclusions of the Vinoway talk.