Too much wine is produced, de-alcoholic products are a possible way out
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In Europe there is a lot of wine, maybe too much. Production constantly exceeds consumption, inventories increase, putting the maintenance of wholesale price lists at risk. There would be a solution and it is that of dealcoholized or dealcoholized wines, increasingly in demand on international markets. An option that Brussels has introduced in the EU with the 2021 regulation of 2017 but that however, it remains prohibited in Italy by the rules laid down by the Consolidated Text on wine launched just a year earlier, in 2016. But let’s go in order.
The production surplus of wine in the EU is faced year after year with emergency tools such as the crisis distillation: a few million hectoliters of wine is sent for distillation to produce direct alcohol for multiple uses. During the pandemic, for example, this “emergency” alcohol production came in handy to produce disinfectants when these, faced with a sudden surge in demand, began to run out.
The use of crisis distillation is back in force this year. France has already asked to eliminate 2.5 million hectoliters of wine (equal to about 5% of its production), Spain instead 3 million (about 10% of the Spanish offer).
In Italy similar requests have not yet been formalized even if it seems that the hypothesis is being studied in at least three regions: Abruzzo, Puglia and Lazio.
In fact in Italy, inventories grew by 5.1% last March compared to 2022 reaching 60 million hectoliters. It is as if Italy (which on average produces about 50 million hectoliters each year) had an entire reserve harvest already stored in the cellar.
To this scenario it should be added that if, on the one hand, Italian wine breaks records in export turnover, on the other, these results are linked above all to the enhancement of the product, to the higher prices recognized for Italian wines given that the quantities shipped are on the other hand, they have been stable for some time if not declining.
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