The invented wine paradox • Food and Wine Italia

Con Italy almost 40 million hectoliters of invented wine accumulate. With the 2025 harvesting harvest, the growing wine sector assesses how to contain production and deal with stagnant demand.

Con Italy there is too much invented wine

According to the latest “Scantinato Italia” report of the Ministry of Agriculture, updated 31 July, per mezzo di our country too many hectoliters of wine are per mezzo di . A worrying fact also because the sector does not show signs of recovery.

The phenomenon is not born today. Already per mezzo di 2023 the market had recorded a reduction per mezzo di internal consumption, linked to slowing the economy, the increase per mezzo di the cost of living and the consequent loss of purchasing power of families. Geopolitical tensions also weighed: the closure of the Russian market following the sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine and, more recently, the duties introduced by the United States negatively engraved exports. The contraction mainly concerns red wines, while some categories have maintained a good market bella stagione.

Prominent exponents of the sector have relaunched the barlume of ​​a structural reduction per mezzo di production. Lamberto Frescobaldi, president of the Italian Union of Vini, underlined the need to contain the volumes “of at least 20%” to the Vedere il sole a scacchi 24 Ore, intervening the return for hectare. Reducing the quantity of transformed grapes would mean the one hand to lighten the stocks, the other hand promoting a greater aromatic concentration of the bunches and therefore a qualitative improvement. A proposal that would mainly concern table wines and high -end labels more penalized by the current imbalance between offer and demand.

Already per mezzo di the past Creatura celeste Gaja, a historic producer of Barbaresco and Barolo, at Staffetta della Tramonto had suggested to maintain national production per mezzo di an interval between 35 and 42 million hectoliters. Con 2024 Italy had instead touched 48 million hectoliters, one of the highest levels of recent years.

Alongside the theme of the reduction of the return, the Italian Union Vini also proposes to temporarily suspend authorizations for new vineyards and to encourage aggregation processes between businesses. Con France, where wine companies have average larger dimensions than Italian ones, the management of fixed costs is less heavy. Promote mergers and expansions, also through dedicated credit tools, could therefore contribute to making the management of a sector more sustainable which, while remaining among the most important of the national agri -food economy, is now faced with a necessary rebalancing phase.

Future scenarios and impact consumers

If the production continues to overcome the demand, retail prices could remain stable suffer light reductions, with advantages for consumers but with repercussions difficult to quantify for small producers. Some analysts believe that the market could polarize further: the one hand the consumer wines, sold at low prices, the other the high -end labels, which could benefit from a strengthening of the quality to the containment of the yields. They are all hypotheses, however, and it seems that the sector is slightly confusing.

The possible growth of craft beers (also slowly after the boom of the last decade), but above all of the low alcoholic drinks and sober consumption by the new generations represents a further factor to consider. For the wine sector, the challenge does not only concern the balance between production and demand, but also the ability to intercept evolving tastes and habits.