Quotations of annual wine production are available on the websites of Chambers of Commerce throughout Italy. It is a sort of commodity exchange for wine, and looking at the data helps to understand this world. So much per liter.
Taking into consideration the complaints that come from different quarters, and with opposing reasons, about the price of wines, about the mark-ups, about the too-low ones you see on the shelves of supermarkets, perhaps for various offers, I would like to make you aware of one thing.
Remember the movie “Trading Places” in which Dan Aykroyd and Eddy Murphy play the roles of two stock traders and manage to break the bank enriching themselves enormously? Well, everything was based on the speculation That was about frozen orange juice. It means that Wall Street also has a very important commodity exchange not only for stocks, commodities such as gas and oil, or for soybeans and wheat, but for many agricultural commodities.
In a very different and more local way, a similar thing, with all the relevant differences, happens with wine. Provincial chambers of commerce, and just think how many there are, almost all of them have some kind of Wine commodity exchange and the quotations are all online
Any examples?
The Cuneo Chamber of Commerce gives the per hectoliter prices for the main bulk Docg wines. For Barolo they range from 893.54 to 950.53 euros per hectoliter, for Barbaresco from 694.33 to 724.68. Roero Arneis 311.80 to 334.34. Seemingly very low, but if we go elsewhere in Bari’s, we see that the Primitivo di Gioia del Colle is at 120 euros per hectoliter.
In Tuscany, Chianti is worth at the Florence Chamber of Commerce from 98 euros to 132, Chianti Classico from 325 to 370, Toscana Sangiovese IGT 80 to 115, again per hectoliter. In Siena the Brunello is priced between 850 and 1,000 euros, the Rosso di Montalcino between 350 and 400. In Treviso the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco (the Docg one) is worth 250 euros, the Doc one only 191.50. The Soave Classico in Verona is 120 euros.
Everything always per hectoliter, but if you divide by one hundred, you get the figure per liter. If you then multiply by three and divide by four, you have the figure of the living cost of the wine contained in a 0.750-l bottle. But you can easily do your own research; it is easy.
Why do I tell you this?
As always for clarity, to give you some actual data And to try to explain how the world of wine goes. How does it work? As a freight exchange, less spectacular than that of “An Armchair for Two” but ultimately similar.
Who’s buying? Bottlers, mainly. Who, like it or not, are for all intents and purposes, and legally, part of the Italian wine sector, of which they represent double-digit percentages.
What do they do. Production lines of their own, but also many specific brands, the so-called “gray brands,” perhaps for foreign countries, with labels from the various German and British, but also Italian, even hard-discount retail groups, or for other parties, who buy in part quantities of bulk to increase their own production.
