With the harvest underway, there are 39.7 million hectoliters of wine in storage in Italy

With the harvest now well underway and entering its final phase in many territories, 39.7 million hectoliters of wine were stored in Italy’s cellars as of September 30, 2024, essentially unchanged (+0.3%) on July 31, 2024 (+120,569 hectoliters) and 7.2% less than on September 30, 2023 (more than 3 million fewer hectoliters). There are also, in Italian cellars, 8.2 million hectoliters of must and 3.4 million hectoliters of new wine still in fermentation. This is what the latest edition of the “Cantina Italia” report No. 9 of 2024, published on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture, and compiled by Icqrf based on data from the Telematic Wine Register, states. Numbers that come, as mentioned, in the full swing of the harvest, and therefore to be taken with due measure. And if there has been a drop in stocks anyway, it should always be considered that there are almost 40 million hectoliters of wine in stock, a figure that is still considerable, and a sign of a market that, as we have often reported, is not running as fast as a few years ago.
Of the wine held, 57. % is PDO, 26.2 % PGI, while varietal wines make up just 1.3% of the total, and 14.7% are generic wines. Geographical Indication wine stocks are highly concentrated; in fact, 20 appellations out of 526 contribute 57.2% of the total stocks.
60.9% of wine in Italy is held in the northern regions, and Veneto alone accounts for 27.8% of national wine, mainly due to the significant contribution coming from stocks in the provinces of Verona (11.6%) and Treviso (9.9%). Prosecco alone is worth 9.5% of all stocks, with 3.2 million hectoliters, followed by Igt Veneto (1.7 million hectoliters), Igt Puglia (1.3 million hectoliters), Valpolicella Ripasso (1.2 million hectoliters), Igt Toscana (1.2 million hectoliters), Igt Salento (974. 282 liters), Chianti (926,003 liters), Igt Trento (895,616 liters), and Igt Sicilia (892,995 liters).
To be evaluated, in anticipation of future stocks, the effects of the 2024 harvest estimated at 41 million hectoliters, and which is expected to be more abundant than the very poor 2023 harvest (but still below the average of the last five years), and it all remains to be seen how the market, which is certainly not going through one of its best periods, will react. Therefore, the figure could be higher than the 53.1 million hectoliters of wine in stock and referring to November 30, 2023.