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Vinitaly continues winter programme
Fresh from a successful outing in Hong Kong, Vintaly International is continuing its winter programme of wine events with meetings in Russia and Italy.
photo credit: Vinitaly
Vinitaly hosted a number of talks as part of its ‘wine2wine business forum’ at the Hong Kong International Wine & Spirits Fair last week.
For the seventh year in a row, Vinitaly hosted a series of seminars where speakers held forth on a variety of topics concerning the Chinese market including the success of online retailers, the importance of effective logistics, brand building and the ins and outs of how the Chinese market works and its opportunities and limitations.
Yesterday (14 November) meanwhile, Vinitaly returned for the 13th year to Russia for its business-to-business (b2b) meeting – introducing Italian wineries to Russian importers.
The economic climate in Russia has worsened significantly of late and the effect on all wines, not least Italian, has been dramatic but there are signs of recovery.
Last year Italian imports to Russia fell 28% – a serious blow for the country when wine represents 24% of Italy’s agribusiness exports to Russia and indeed Italy is the leading wine importer to Russia with a 25% market share to France’s 15%.
Furthermore, as Vinitaly admitted, this situation has meant, “producers… especially medium-to-small sized wineries, have had to agree to suspended payments and offer deeper discounts.”
Aware of these problems, Italian producers have moved to counter the rouble’s decline by offering other, less-expensive wines from their portfolios.
Pierangelo Tommasi, owner and export manager at Tommasi Wine Estates in the Veneto, explained: “We have been in Russia for almost 20 years and have witnessed the great potential of this market. In order to counteract the rouble depreciation we have developed a double strategy striving on the one hand to maintain our market share for premium wines such as Amarone and Brunello, and on the other to promote medium-priced wines like Valpollicella Ripasso, Primitivo and IGT Toscana.”
From January to July of this year however, Italian imports have rebounded by 4.5% against the same period last year, with a value of €28.8 million.
The Veneto in particular will have a strong presence at Vinitaly Russia. Of the 160 wineries exhibiting at the fair, one third come from the north-eastern region and the area’s wines will also be the focus of a masterclass by Vinitaly’s wine ambassadors to Russia, Veronica Denisova and Nikolay Chashchinov.
Chashchinov said: “2016 has been another challenging year for the Russian economy, but I can see a definite growth in wine consumption. On the positive side, many new wine-bars and specialised wine shops have being opening with a more careful wine selection thus representing an interesting target for Italian producers, especially for lesser known Italian wines and grape varieties with better price/quality relationship.”
Finally, there will be another wine2wine event held in Verona from 6-7 December.
Over two days at the Veronafiere Congress Centre visitors will be able to meet with Italian producers, while there will also be a range of talks and seminars on topics as diverse as precision viticulture, the art of luxury labelling, trends in digital marketing, the future of e-commerce in the wine industry, lessons from Italian fashion successes in China and the legal and institutional aspects for exporting to the US.
For the full programme and to register click here.