The end of the year is a time to take stock, reflect on the past, and look to the future. The world of wine is also called to ask itself how 2018 went.
What follows is a deliberately biased wine report from 2018, from a privileged but subjective vantage point, from a young startup racing to become big.
Wine opportunities
The data on wine deals highlight a discontinuous panorama in Italy. In our country there is a habit of consuming wine but the nectar of Bacchus is drunk on different occasions, with different methods and frequencies among the various segments of the population.
The over 35s tend to drink wine during meals, while for millennials the use is less traditional, concentrated on the weekend and very linked to the company of friends.
Two transversal data: men tend to accumulate more stocks and the importance of product communication emerges in all categories.
Trends in wine: 2018
In 2018, the greatest (online) interest in “wine” occurred in December. The theme of "Italian wine", however, has a peak in mid-April, who knows if this is a fact to be linked to Vinitaly...
Some of the most significant trends of 2018 were natural wines and the search for quality vs quantity. And then bubbles, bubbles, bubbles ...
Trends in wine: 2019
2019 will see millennials strengthen their position as the world's largest wine consumers.
These, to date, are the hypothesized trends: importance of the label (great purchasing leverage) and diffusion of canned wine (it was also said at the end of 2017). The growth in the importance of packaging was one of the crucial points of wine in 2018 and it will be the same for next year.
If the growth of international wines seems to be a general trend in the world of wine, Italy confirms itself as a leader in autochthony and biodiversity , strong points on which to push to stand out.
Italian wine in the UK
In 2018, Prosecco was still very popular on the English market, together with Tuscan and Piedmontese wines .
The Brexit unknown remains, but for 2019 the trends of the English market affecting Italian wine will see growing attention for native vines (especially white), strongly linked to the territory, and for vegan ones, but also for wine pairing -food and the diversification of formats for different consumption occasions.
In the kitchen: food-wine pairings
Free rein to your imagination in the wine-food pairings of 2018! And so here is the first guide to pairing Italian wines and Japanese cuisine (by Shigeru Hayashi) and the growing number of pairings of the past, between local foods and wines. In between, there is a creative food and wine world, where trends coexist that emphasize local products, healthiness, "without" dishes, the cooking of leftovers together with fast and casual restaurant formulas, the street food that never goes away fashion, to Middle Eastern cuisine. Everything strictly for Instagramming.
Wine gifts
In the month of December there was a strong increase in the purchase of wine by companies, which, over all other gifts, much prefer wine gifts for members and employees. After all, at Christmas almost one in four Italians in 2018 choose food and wine to give their gifts.
Wine and social media
A difficult marriage, the one between wine and social media, because it must combine the experiential product par excellence, which has always lived on lived occasions, slow times, introspection, stories... together with contemporary marketing needs that focus entirely on speed, on immediate purchase, on strong emotional triggers.
One of the keys will be storytelling, but of value .
