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The Winery Italy has never been so crowded: 38.5 million hectoliters in barrels and tanks. A mega stock that has grown 60% in just 5 years. And now a new load is about to be added: 47.2 million hectoliters (-1% compared to last year), the result of the 2020 grape harvest. Good and abundant harvest. This allows Italy to maintain world leadership in production, highlighting once again the French (45 million, + 3.1%) and the Spanish (42 million, + 13%).
Ours is a record that worries us more than rejoices – comments the president of the winemakers Riccardo Cotarella – because we must focus on quality rather than quantity.
If it produces so much, sell less due to the Covid effect. For the first time in twenty years, exports fell by 4% in the first 5 months of the year. And the 150 million euros from the State in support of the sector did not hit the mark: only 53 were used.
The solution proposed by the distillation document of the Italian Wine Union. It means transforming red, white and rosé wines with a designation of origin into ethyl alcohol. It is used mainly for the production of disinfectants.
Yesterday Assoenologi, Ismea and Uiv presented a dossier on the super harvest in progress. The North is expected to increase production (+ 3.1% in 2019), the Center to decline (-2%) and the South to slow down (-7%). There is a leading group of regions that are worth 2/3 of Italian bottles: Veneto, Puglia (despite the 5% decline), Emilia Romagna and Abruzzo. Piedmont, Trentino Alto Adige, Lombardy and Marche are growing, the opposite sign of Tuscany, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sicily. The quality of the grape spread, with different peaks of excellence. There is quality that is needed to support the recovery of the markets, says Ernesto Abbona, president of the UIV. A sector that seemed unstoppable until a few months ago now has to deal with the closures (and lost sales) of restaurants and hotels.
Two state aid to winemakers: the distillation of common wines and the green harvest, that is, the voluntary reduction of the harvest in exchange for subsidies. The first, financed with 50 million, was used for only less than a third, 14 million, perhaps because the cheapest bottles, in recent months, far from collapsing in supermarkets. The second measure was not as successful as expected. But the unspent money can still be used in other support initiatives during the year, Agriculture Minister Teresa Bellanova promised yesterday, who illustrated the non-refundable bonus of 5,000 euros to a restaurant to buy Italian products (even bottles).
What initiatives are possible to reactivate a sector that in the world without Covid, in 2019, exported bottles for 6,400 million euros? Distillation of Doc wines was not mentioned since 2011, when the then minister Giancarlo Galán proposed it. According to Paolo Castelletti, secretary of the UIV, the French model. Paris has allocated 170 million for crisis distillation: all employees. Cautious Assoenologi: Let’s talk about it, but the value of our products should be kept high.
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