May 2025

Experiencing The Palio di Santa Croce [Wine Barrel Rolling Race] in Suvereto – A Celebration of Wine, Heritage, and Human Endurance

On May 17th, 2025, the medieval village of Suvereto pulsed with energy, history, and the thunderous roll of wine barrels as it hosted the Palio di Santa Croce, the third qualifying stage of the prestigious Palio Nazionale delle Botti delle Città del Vino. As a wine journalist immersed in the cultural richness of Italy’s wine territories, I had the pleasure of experiencing the event firsthand alongside my esteemed colleagues Filippo Magnani (@filippomagnaniwine) and Giovanni Marotta.

This unique spectacle transformed the historic heart of Suvereto into a dynamic urban arena. Teams of “spingitori” (pushers), both men and women, competed by rolling 500-litre wooden wine barrels along a challenging route ranging from 1,200 to 1,800 meters. Far more than a physical contest, the Palio represents a vibrant fusion of athleticism, folklore, and enological identity—an ode to the enduring spirit of the Wine Cities of Italy!

The atmosphere was electric: flags waved, drums beat, and cheers echoed as teams from across the country tested their strength and strategy. The home crowd erupted with pride as Suvereto’s men’s team claimed first place, followed by Refrontolo and Castelnuovo Don Bosco. In the women’s category, San Gusmé triumphed, with Castelnuovo Don Bosco and Suvereto rounding out the podium.

This event is more than a race, it is a community celebration deeply rooted in local wine traditions, uniting generations through sport, heritage, and regional pride. Events like these not only preserve the cultural fabric of small towns like Suvereto but also promote wine tourism in a way that is immersive, authentic, and unforgettable.

For anyone seeking a taste of Tuscany’s living history, the Palio Nazionale delle Botti delle Città del Vino is an unmissable experience, where wine barrels roll not just with speed, but with centuries of tradition.

Website for further details: https://cittadelvino.com/progetti/palio-nazionale-delle-botti-delle-citta-del-vino/

Uncovering Florence’s Wine Windows: A Journey into Florence’s Hidden Renaissance Rituals

After weeks of anticipation, I finally arrived in Florence, eager to delve into its storied wine culture, and particularly its legendary buchette del vino, or “wine windows.” These small arched openings, discreetly embedded in the façades of Renaissance-era palazzos, have long fascinated me. To experience them firsthand felt like stepping into a living fragment of wine history.

Dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries, these wine windows allowed Florentine noble families to sell wine directly from their residences. The system was ingenious: it permitted private, tax-avoiding transactions and helped minimize public gatherings, an early model of socially distant commerce. These architectural curiosities reveal a narrative of ingenuity, adaptation, and an enduring passion for wine that remains central to the city’s identity.

As I wandered through Florence’s historic center, I came across several operational wine windows. At one, I was served a crisp glass of Vernaccia; at another, a bold Chianti Classico—each poured through the same arched portals that once served Florentines centuries ago. Strolling through the city and receiving wine through these charming windows was a delightful and unique experience. There’s magic in being served through a stone-framed portal once used by Medici-era merchants.

These buchette are far more than quaint historical relics. They stand as enduring emblems of Florence’s rich cultural and vinous heritage.

“Long live the Wine Windows!”

The Wine Windows Association

Founded in 2015, the Associazione Buchette del Vino (Wine Windows Association) is committed to preserving and promoting these historic features. Based in Florence, the association catalogues and maps remaining wine windows throughout the city and across Tuscany. It also supports restoration initiatives and offers educational programs through guided tours, exhibitions, and scholarly publications. Explore the map of wine windows here: https://buchettedelvino.org/home%2520eng/maps.html

Historic British Wine Merchant Berry Bros. & Rudd to Launch First U.S. Flagship in Washington, D.C.

As part of a strategic international expansion, the venerable British wine institution Berry Bros. & Rudd has announced the opening of its first bricks-and-mortar retail outlet in the United States, to be located in Washington, D.C. This significant development reflects a broader transatlantic demand for luxury British heritage brands, particularly within the fine wine and spirit’s sector.

Established in 1698, Berry Bros. & Rudd holds the distinction of being Britain’s oldest wine and spirits merchant and is internationally renowned for its longstanding affiliation with the British Royal Family. It has served as the official wine supplier to the Royal Household since the reign of King George III in 1760, a heritage that continues to enhance the brand’s reputation for excellence and tradition.

While Berry Bros. & Rudd currently maintains international offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, and its historic headquarters in St. James’s, London, the U.S. retail launch represents the firm’s first physical retail presence in North America. This move aligns with a noticeable uptick in American consumer interest in authentic British luxury products, paralleling similar expansions by iconic British brands such as Fortnum & Mason.

“This marks a key milestone in our international growth, and we look forward to serving a wider community of customers across the US” said a company spokesperson.

The Washington, D.C. location will provide curated selections of fine wines and rare spirits, underpinned by centuries of expertise and Royal endorsement, positioning the store as a premier destination for discerning American oenophiles.

The 2025 Edition of Regina Ribelle – Vernaccia di San Gimignano Wine Fest Successfully Concluded!

The 2025 edition of Regina Ribelle—Vernaccia di San Gimignano Wine Fest concluded triumphantly, reaffirming its status as a pivotal wine event in Italy’s calendar. Dedicated to Vernaccia di San Gimignano, the historic white wine [the ‘White Queen’] in a land of reds, the festival drew over 1,500 visitors to the medieval streets of San Gimignano for a multi-sensory journey through tastings, seminars, and cultural encounters.

Strongly promoted by the Consorzio del Vino Vernaccia di San Gimignano, in collaboration with the Municipality of San Gimignano, the festival featured 34 wineries, facilitating over 10,000 tastings across the two-day celebration. The program extended beyond wine to include masterclasses, gastronomic pairings with Tuscan delicacies, and family-friendly entertainment.

An important highlight was the Best Sommelier of Tuscany competition—organized by the Italian Sommelier Association (AIS)—with Luca Marchiani receiving top honours.

From an industry standpoint, the event served as a crucial platform for media engagement. Over 80 international and Italian journalists, including myself, were hosted for exclusive press days (May 15–16), which featured technical tastings and curated winery visits. The gala dinner, held in the breathtaking historic Piazza del Duomo, was curated by Chef Gaetano Trovato of the two-Michelin-starred Arnolfo Ristorante.

Adding a cultural dimension, the unveiling of a sculpture by renowned Tuscan artist Andrea Roggi underscored the connection between Vernaccia and the arts, both classical and contemporary.

The 2024 Vintage

The 2024 vintage marks a return to productivity after the decline of 2023. Despite a rainy September that delayed the harvest, the results were notably elegant. Vernaccia di San Gimignano demonstrated once again its remarkable adaptability to its native territory. In terms of numbers, the 2024 harvest produced 5,904,698 kg of grapes for Vernaccia di San Gimignano DOCG wine, equating to 4,069,843 litres of wine, with a 44.18% increase compared to the previous year. The number of bottles released to the market is 3,670,357.

“We are extremely pleased with the great public response at this 2025 edition of Regina Ribelle – Vernaccia di San Gimignano Wine Fest. It was truly exciting to see so many people—journalists, tasters, professionals, and wine lovers—come together to celebrate this unique wine, a symbol of an extraordinary region. Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who believed in this challenge alongside the Consorzio, from the authorities and producers to local businesses and communities, contributing to an event that celebrates a truly unique Denomination: eight centuries of history looking decisively toward the future. Regina Ribelle is now an unmissable event in the wine world, a moment to narrate Vernaccia di San Gimignano as the oldest white wine in our region.

This festival represents not only a great celebration and an ode to the ‘Beauty’ of Vernaccia di San Gimignano but also an opportunity to reinforce the bond between tradition and the future, celebrating its identity and its central role in the Tuscan and national wine scene. Let’s not forget that in 2026, we will celebrate 750 years of this denomination in the territory and 60 years as Italy’s first DOC—a truly unique milestone,” commented Irina Strozzi, President of the Consorzio del Vino Vernaccia di San Gimignano.

The next edition of Regina Ribelle – Vernaccia di San Gimignano Wine Fest will occur from May 14 to 17, 2026, in San Gimignano.

Barclays Predicts Global Alcohol Trends: Why Demographics Hold the Key

Several financial institutions, from Rabobank to BMO Capital Markets, have recently released reports on the state of the alcohol, including wine markets. But the most wide-ranging of these was The Future of Global Alcohol, produced by Barclays Investment Bank for its private clients, which is not publicly available.

Areni spoke with Laurence Whyatt, the lead author of the report and the Head of European Beverages Equity Research. Whyatt is an incisive analyst and communicator.

Here are three key takeaways from the conversation:

Demographics are destiny

Whyatt says that Barclays Bank has been concerned with demographics for a long time, because “The more people you have, the more potential consumers you have,” he said.

He said that after recognizing that demographics were an important driver of the market, Barclays built a database that layered economic and other information on top of UN population data. The result is an alcohol database for every country.

“What we learned is that the demographic changes were largely explaining the volume changes in alcohol,” he said.

After looking at the data, they realized the Chinese market was changing.

‘We identified the issues in demographics, particularly in the Chinese market, back in 2023, when we became much more concerned about potential growth,” he said.

The reason is that the number of young people has been declining for more than a decade.

“We were running some models looking at how that population was going to evolve over the next decade and realized it was going to shrink by nearly a quarter between now and 2035,” said Whyatt. “That made us much more concerned about the potential for growth of things like Cognac and even the Scotch Whisky industry.”

Consumption has already begun its downward slide. “China’s alcohol consumption has halved per capita since 2015 in spirits,” says Whyatt.” Beer consumption is down around 20% since 2013.”

One group is the most important

According to Whyatt, not only are demographics the most important indicator of alcohol consumption, but the proportion of people in the population aged 25-40 is critical. This group not only predicts total alcohol consumption but is the group that’s most likely to be working.

“Western Europe is seeing declining per capita consumption,” he said. “Young people in these countries are declining in number; the birth rate has been falling in a number of these places over the past few decades, and you really need a healthy young population in order to have high alcohol consumption.”

The birth rate has been falling in Western Europe over the past few decades, and you really need a healthy young population in order to have high alcohol consumption – Laurence Whyatt

The outlook for the US remains positive

Whyatt says the US is a good market to study because there is so much publicly available data.

“We can go back a century to Prohibition and look at how alcohol consumption has changed,” he says. “Generally speaking, we’ve seen an increase in alcohol over that century.”

There have been two major times when consumption has fallen: the first was after WWII, owing to economic weakness. “The second time was in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, when the US introduced a 21-year-old legal drinking age,” he says.

Since then, there have been three decades of growth in per capita consumption, until the pandemic altered things. “Overall alcohol consumption increased in 2020 and 2021 when lockdown started to end, then we started seeing a decline in alcohol purchases.”

Young people are also drinking less, with declines in underage consumption, plus a decline in heavy drinking among young people since 2010. Whyatt notes, however, that stories about young people drinking less have to be treated with caution.

“The study that’s often quoted to me is the Gallup study,” he says, adding that Gallup is a very reputable polling company. “People look at the stats showing that, say, 18-to-30-year-olds are drinking less, which is true, but only because the 18-to-20-year-olds are drinking less, but the 21-to-30-year-olds are drinking about the same as what they used to drink.”

The 18-to-20-year-olds are drinking less, but the 21-to-30-year-olds are drinking about the same as
what they used to drink – Laurence Whyatt

Whyatt also said that US adults consume the most when they first turn 21, “and that level of consumption stays pretty linear until the age of about 40 to 45.” From then on, consumption begins to decline up to the age of 65. It drops again from age 75.

Whyatt remains positive about the US market because of its continuing economic growth.