For several years in the wine industry there has been a discussion about the changes in consumption in various markets. Are we really at the end of an era? And what will the next one look like? Let’s hazard a few guesses.
Emilio Pedron is one of the sages of Italian wine. Co-founder in 1986 of Gruppo Italiano Vini, then CEO of Bertani, former president of the Valpolicella Consortium and now head of Vito Cardinali, a winery in the Marche region. He, whom the wine world knows deeply, during the presentation in Milan of our Essential Guide, said some very important things about the state of affairs in this area.
We are facing two transitions
He argued that we are facing two transitions, one related to sustainability and climate change, the other to everything that is happening in the economic field internationally. Crucial transitions, or “crises.” Pedron said he sees, however. too much pessimism around and that, if wine has managed to overcome really difficult times, phylloxera, world wars, by us the methanol scandal, in all likelihood it will also manage to deal with these problems, which in any case are not small. Enrico Zanoni, CEO of Cavit, another key player on the national wine scene, talks about the the end of an era
. Quella cominciata proprio con la tragedia del metanolo, nella primavera del 1986, e che si sta chiudendo in questi anni.
Certainly immediately after that terrible period many things happened. New wines, new protagonists. The emergence of the Supertuscan, for example, the phenomenon of the Barolo Boys and the new frontier of Barbera (Bricco dell’Uccellone was born in 1982 and went on the market a few years later).
Industry publishing
The birth of the Gambero Rosso and Arcigola Wine Guide, then Slow Food, a new version of Veronelli’s. Then The Gorge By Gianni Sassi and Antonio Piccinardi. All to enrich a publishing sector that already counted on magazines such as Civilization of Drinking e Wines&Liquors.
It was a period of great momentum for production and publishing in the field that lasted for many years. Then the momentum, especially in publishing, slowly died down. Or rather, it pulverized into many initiatives that have fatally limited its effectiveness. Now, for reasons with which everyone is familiar-pandemic, wars, inflation-the market is struggling to cope and consequently publishing initiatives and even trade shows are suffering.
A centrifugal force at work
This is an analysis done in a roundabout way, of course, but it is what has been discussed in our industry for at least a couple of years. Added to all this is a kind of centrifugal force that makes the wine industry and its market is divided into many branches. More traditional wines, the result of origins and types, are joined by the world of “natural” wines, dealcolates, even cocktails also based on wine, such as spritzes.
The world of younger consumers is less attracted to the wines “of the fathers,” and consumption, at the same age, when compared with that of just previous generations, is in sharp decline. Health reasons, environmental reasons, certainly. Also a somewhat rejecting way that some of the communication of wine, through slang or hyper-technical languages, has had in recent years.
More culture and less technique
Everything suggests that in the future many things will change profoundly and quickly, more than we can imagine now. I would summarily try to say that we must try to put wine back at the center of a discourse that certainly includes technical elements, but also cultural ones, as Veronelli did in his time. Telling about people and territories.
An old recipe, perhaps, but to be made with new tools, to bring as many people as possible back together and fall in love again with a world that is also made of passion and not just of polyphenols or indigenous yeasts.
