Despite a grape harvest that, when all is said and done, turned out to be lighter than forecast, Italian wine cellars are bursting at the seams with unsold product and prices are plummeting. This is the denunciation launched by the Italian Wine Union, which reported the data communicated on 13 February by Italia to the EU Commission and which reveal a 2025 wine production that stood at 44.38 million hectolitres, in line with the previous year (+0.7%). The forecast was 5o million hl.
A result that also hides some positive aspects such as the rational reduction in production yields decided by the main Italian denominations precisely because of the weakness of the market grappling with falling consumption and US tariffs.
However, the production quota, operated on the territories to keep the supply chain in balance – according to UIV – was not enough given the current level of stocks.
“To date,” commented the President of the Italian Wine Union, Lamberto Frescobaldi, “after two vintages just over 44 million hectolitres, there are 61 million hectolitres of wine in Italian cellars, 6% more than in the same period last year. This figure rises to almost 68 million hectolitres (+7.5%) if musts are included. This means that at the moment we can no longer afford not only vintages in line with the average of the last ten years, at 47.5 million hectolitres, but not even those with the volumes, hitherto considered low, of the last two years. It is the case,” added Frescobaldi, “to review the current production structure at a central level through reforms to the Testo Unico that would guarantee a flexible system, capable of opening up or contracting according to market dynamics.
Cellar stocks indicate a strong surplus (+11.3%) for ordinary/varietal wines and white IGT wines (+10.5%). The trend in stocks for PDO wines was more contained, at +3.6% (31.7 million hectolitres).
“The situation remains delicate,” added the UIV secretary general, Paolo Castelletti, “with the pace of product release down by around 20% not only compared to the beginning of 2024, when there were strong requests for product from the United States due to the stockpiles accumulated in anticipation of Trump’s tariffs, but also compared to 2023, a year not affected by external events. Despite the fact that production is not particularly abundant, the dynamics of bulk prices remains very sluggish, with quotations for ordinary white wines (those with the largest market, due to their use as a sparkling wine base) which in the main producing regions show average falls of more than 10% compared to last year. There is also tension in the situation for denomination wines, where there are very few cases of rising quotations, with trends tending towards stability or decline. Dynamics,” he concluded, “generated by market difficulties in Italia and abroad, particularly in non-EU countries where we estimate a 7% drop in exports by 2025.
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