Category: Wine Economics

Valpolicella Soars in 2021

The Valpolicella Wine Consortium has recently announced the numbers for the first five months of 2021.  The numbers show around 30 million state seals were issued for the Valpolicella, Ripasso, Amarone and Recioto origins, which is 18% over 2020.

Compared to 2019, the increase is 14%.  Amarone, which after a disastrous January 2021 (-24.5 %), accelerated to a sensational 38 % increase by May 31. According to the consortium’s analysis, these are the best figures of the last decade. “A total of 7.4 million bottles were brought to market in this period, two million more than last year. Not only is the quantity excellent, but the performance also gives us hope. According to the latest price list of the Chamber of Commerce of Verona, the open goods have increased by 4.5 percent,” Christian Marchesini, president of the consortium, states. The figures are due to a combination of the restrictive measures of the consortium as well as the high flexibility of many small businesses, which immediately knew how to move on unfamiliar terrain like e-commerce and food retail.

Valpolicella achieved an overall growth of 14 % after a strong pick-up in the month of May (+48 percent). Ripasso closed with an increase of twelve %. Stocks are down for all typologies of Valpolicella, especially Amarone and Recioto. In May 2021, five million bottles less were registered than in May 2020 (-8 percent).

Source:  Valpolicella Wine Consortium

Monks of France’s First Papal Vineyard Sell Wine to Support the Community

The Benedictine monks and nuns who tend to the first papal vineyard in France have launched an appeal to sell their wine to help the families of local wine growers.

Located on a hill in the Rhône Valley, the Abbeys of Le Barroux work together with the local wine-marking community to cultivate the land first established as a vineyard by Pope Clement V in 1309.

The monks are hoping to sell 15,000 bottles of their Via Caritatis wine during the month of June to help support the community after it was hit hard by a loss of sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fr. Michael, an American who has been a part of the French monastery for more than 30 years, told CNA that around 80 families directly depend on the winery for their livelihood.

“They work hard. They are in difficult conditions. Their wine in the past wasn’t recognized for what it was, which was a pretty high-quality wine, so they were just not making enough money to get by,” the Benedictine states.

“These families around us were making good wines, especially because we have the soil that is capable of producing … great wine, if it was cared for properly … The monastery was able to invest and to help these wine-making families get out of a situation which, all alone, I don’t think that they would have ever been able to get out of,” he explained.

With the help of Philippe Cambie, who has been recognized as one of the world’s top oenologists, or experts in the study of wine and winemaking, the monks have been able to create blends that produce award-winning wines from the combination of small plots of land owned by local growers with the abbey vineyard. Cambie has contributed to the wine production in its last stages at both former papal vineyards, which grow the same grape varieties.

The monks’ wine is less expensive than the nearby Châteauneuf-du-Pape vineyards, which, Fr. Michael points out, was founded later by Pope John XXII.

“You can buy wine for a cheaper price, and yet it can be almost the equivalent of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. And at the same time, by buying this wine you are helping winemakers who are in need of money at this time, and COVID-19 has not helped their situation,” the priest said.

The Benedictines’ Via Caritatis winery is selling red, white, and rosé wines which ship to the United States and elsewhere in Europe – website – http://www.via-caritatis.com/

Fr. Michael said that they chose the name Via Caritatis for their winery because “wine is a symbol of charity, and also the charity of Christ who gave himself.”

The monks support themselves through manual labor, according to the rule of Saint Benedict.

“The monks try and strive to produce something capable of making them not dependent on others, and not only that, but to produce enough to be able to give charity to the poor, to give a part of the income to their poor,” he said. “We give part of our income here, every year, we give it to charitable organizations.”

“A bottle of wine is not just something that man uses to nourish his body,” he said. “If Christ chose wine to transform into his blood, it is for a reason, and he chose wine for a reason. So wine is something material, but it’s something that’s called by Christ to be transformed into something spiritual.”

Source:  The Catholic Telegraph

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Global alcohol consumption will bounce back to pre-Covid levels by 2023

Global alcohol consumption will return to pre-Covid levels by 2023, according to recent IWSR data, with the market already showing signs of recovery.

Projected to grow by 2.9% in volume by the end of 2021, the research forecasts that total alcohol consumption will reach pre-Covid levels within two years and will continue to increase steadily until 2025.

Total alcohol volume decreased by 6.2% globally during 2020, affected by lockdowns and other restrictions.   Total wine and beer volumes are both forecast to be down about -9% in 2020 and are unlikely to regain volumes for several years.   However, within the wine sector, sparkling wine volume consumption is anticipated to recover to 2019 levels by 2023, along with the rest of the alcohol market. Premium-and-above Prosecco is expected to be least impacted by Covid, and premium-and-above still wine forecast to recover lost volumes by 2022.

This growth will be boosted by several factors including the growth of ecommerce which is up 45% from 2019; to reach US $29 bn in 2020, and RTD’s, the industry quickly adapting in key markets and the increasing sophistication of the at home occasion in many markets.

“In many global markets Covid-19 accelerated the impact and growth of key industry drivers, such as the development of ecommerce, premiumization, the rise of the home premise, moderation and the need for convenience in product formats,” said the IWSR’s CEO Mark Meek.

“These are the trends that will also underpin the industry’s resilience as it pivots to meet consumers where they are in the years to come. Additionally, across many markets, some segments of the population now have significantly more disposable income than they did in 2019, some of which will be spent on beverage alcohol products.”

Another trend set to give alcohol a leg up is product premiumization, according to the IWSR, with premium-and-above wine and spirits forecast to increase by 25.6% in total volume between 2020-2025 compared to 0.8% volume growth over the same period for brands in lower price tiers.

Swedish wine growers establish a new industry association

Do you have Swedish wine on your wine list?  Well, now it’s time!

A group of Swedish professional wine growers recently formed a new industry association.

Starting from a small-scale hobby cultivation, in just a few decades it has emerged to a large scale professional association. This new industry association has been set up to maintain the opportunities and expectations of these winemakers. The new organization has been named “Sweden’s Industry Organisation for Oenology & Viticulture (SBOV)”.

Emma Serner, founder of Långmyre Vineri has been appointed as chairman of the industry organization.

“It will be exciting and fun to lead an organization where we will jointly bring the Swedish one. the winning industry into the future. Already today there are barely twenty producers who invested and positioned themselves with both quality and quantity to be considered important for Swedish business and the experience industry in the countryside” says Emma Serner

The Swedish wine industry is a young industry with great potential. Currently, grape cultivation involves around a hundred hectares – but it is estimated that there are ten thousand hectares suitable for grape cultivating. These hectares are in coastal locations in Halland, Skåne, Blekinge, Öland and Gotland as well as at Vänern and Vättern.

“Berries grow best in cool areas – they simply get richer fragrance and greater depth of taste. The Swedish, mild summer with many hours of sun is therefore very suitable for grapes” says Lotta Nordmark at Sweden’s University of Agriculture in Skånska Alnarp.

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“Tastry” uses Chemistry + AI to Analyze Wine and Generate Flavor Profiles

A California startup that taught a computer to “taste” wine is using technology to help winemakers improve their wines and attract new customers.

Founder Katerina Axelsson says Tastry uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze “tens of thousands of wines a year,” generating vast reams of data to help winemakers and retailers target their products more effectively.

Ms Axelsson formed her idea as a chemistry student working at a winery, where she noticed “idiosyncrasies” in how wine was evaluated. A 100,000-gallon tank of wine would be divided in two and sold to two different brands, where it would end up in different bottles, sold at different prices and receive different scores from critics, she states

She began analyzing wine samples, identifying thousands of compounds. Using AI, she could see how these compounds interacted with each other, creating the wine’s flavor profile. She then took that profile and used machine learning to compare its flavor, aroma, texture and color with other wines in the database.

The method allowed Axelsson to develop a wine recommendation app, which was launched on screens in the wine aisles of retailers in 2019. Through a quiz, consumers could input their flavor preferences, and the software would recommend a suitable wine with 80-90% accuracy at the first attempt, she says, rising to 95% with additional input form the user. Tastry’s system now powers its BottleBird wine recommendation app.

Tastry has also begun working directly with winemakers in the United States. Brands pay to have their bottle analyzed “and in exchange they would have access to what we call an insights dashboard, where they can identify how their wine is perceived in their market of opportunity, on a store, local or regional level,” says Axelsson.

One client is O’Neill Vintners and Distillers, one of the largest wine producers in California. To produce some blends, it combines wine from “upwards of 30 different tanks” to create the desired flavor profile, according to Marty Spate, vice president of winemaking and winegrowing.

The company is using Tastry’s AI to “streamline” the blending process by suggesting which tanks to use. “[Tastry is] not a replacement for the modern winemaking team,” he says, however, “that data can be pretty powerful.”

But in an industry steeped in artisan tradition, there are some critics of its algorithmic approach.  “It’s like having a computer analyze a piece of art,” says Ronan Sayburn, master sommelier and head of wine at 67 Pall Mall, a private members club for wine lovers in London.

“I don’t know how keen people would be on following what a computer tells them to drink, based on what they had previously,” he says. “I think part of the appeal of wine is forming your own opinions.”

Sayburn concedes technology can be useful to the amateur, for recommending serving temperature, aeration time and food pairings. “But when it comes to something which is a very emotive subject, I think there’s got to be human contact,” he argues.

Axelsson agrees that Tastry is not a substitute for a sommelier. But she says the scalability of her product makes it possible to analyze more wines per year than a human could ever taste.

Her company will start offering services in Europe later this year in collaboration with an online retailer, and is already thinking beyond wine, having conducted tests for beers, spirits, coffee and fragrances.

In the meantime, she’s happy to spend time winning over the naysayers.

“It takes time to educate any industry about AI and its benefits,” she says. “But if the use case is there and the value proposition is there, I think it’s just a matter of time before people really embrace it.”

Source :CNN Business London

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