One of the few certainties of 2020 is that, despite the emergency and uncertainties brought by the pandemic, people haven’t give up wine.
In the US, Americans have drunk more Italian wine (+2%) than the previous year, with a home consumption increased by 10%. Italian sparkling wine was the variety with the highest increase in terms of volume (+25%), even outdoing Champagne (+17%).
On the other hand, in South Africa the pandemic has affected the sells badly, and the trend hasn’t reverted yet. Because of the South African Coronavirus variant, which is increasing the numbers of cases across the country, the South African President has forbidden the selling of wine, in order to avoid weighing on the health facilities, already overburdened by the fight against COVID. Italian producers have obviously felt the effect of this decision, being South Africa market usually very responsive to the Italian offer.
And what happened in Italy? In 2020, people drank more local wine than in 2019 (+5.5% in terms of volume, +7% in terms of value), and although unsold wine has increased by 4.4% and the agri-food industry has suffered a decline in exports, the Italian market has endured. According to the Istat data analyzed by WineNews, during the first 10 months of 2020 (last available data) wine has had a decrease of just -3.3%, compared to the last 11 months of 2019, gaining 5.1 billion Euros
It looks like wine is the Italian excellence that has better withstanded the pandemic challenges.
