Reflecting on the data on Italian viticulture, interesting information emerges that makes us understand why Italy is the country of “wine artisans.”
I have a habit, when addressing a topic, of having some data at hand, to understand the extent of problems and phenomena. When talking about the Italian wine sector, for example, some data, in my opinion, would be important to know.
The first is that in our country there are about 650 thousand hectares of vineyards that belong to about 250 thousand owners. Which means that the average property is about two and a half acres. In France it is almost double, in Australia more than twenty times. This is why at our place the 60 percent or so of production is in the hands of social wineries, which bring together in one structure the production of thousands of small winemakers.
It is also the reason why the role of consortia is very important, both for the protection of the various production areas and for promotion, which would be impossible for small and medium-sized wineries to manage independently.
Industrial production? Not in Italy
So when it comes to huge “industrial” productions, this affects other countries much more than Italy. So much so that no Italian company is among the top ten in the world in terms of production, despite the fact that we are the world’s first or second largest producer and the largest exporter in terms of quantity. Gallo, Constellation, Beringer&Blaas, they are also more than ten times bigger than Gruppo Italiano Vini, and thirty times bigger than Antinori, which we pass for big.
A 300,000-bottle winery, which is considered quite large in Italy, would be called a “boutique winery” in Australia, just so you understand.
Small is beautiful
All this means that we are basically artisans in the wine sector and not arch industrialists, as we sometimes hear. For us, “small is beautiful” is not a slogan, but is the main reality of production, even of those who then give grapes to the cooperative structures which, like it or not, still play a fundamental function in the Italian wine industry.
Not all of them work well, some have shone with inefficiency, it is true. But there are many that instead represent inescapable landmarks that allow those who produce grapes to continue to do so, continuing traditions, dealing with defense of territories from cementification and so on. Why Doing viticulture does not stop at wine production alone.
