Tuscan grape prices fall 50%

As if to validate my occasional screeds about overpriced Italian wines, Roberto Giuliani of Esilazioni Etiliche has published a post relating the "worst conditions in twenty years" for the grape growers and winemakers of Tuscany. One spokesman for a Tuscan property said that he was offered ten euros for a quintale (roughly 220 pounds) of white grapes -- less than the cost of harvesting them. He left them on the vine. (Click on the link above to read the entire piece in Italian.)

This isn't the first I've heard of viticulturalists leaving grapes to rot this year, nor is Tuscany alone in its plight. The market is so weak that even Germany seems to be taking a lot less Italian red wine than usual -- and if the Germans aren't buying there is a crisis indeed. 

The Italian Wine Guy also has written lately about the crazy, unrealistic pricing of so many Italian producers -- one of his periodic screeds on the subject, too.  (Click here for link.) Everybody in the business knows that this is a huge stumbling block.   

Comments

[Gianni Lovato]

Looks as if the bubble is bursting everywhere.
No shadenfreude here, but...
Magari sarà tempo di far tornare alcuni dei vini a quello che erano anni orsono: do I dare say "una bevanda"??
Sì, è vero che i vini nobili Italiani dovrebbero essere bevuti "per ricordare", ma non è altrettanto vero che ottime memorie possono essere risvegliate anche da un buono, semplice ed onesto bicchiere di Barbera, Freisa, Valpolicella o Soave come quelli che si bevevano "alla spina" in osteria una volta?
Credo ci siano spazio e soldi per tutti, se si adopera il cervello.
To some degree, even Mondavi (Robert, bless his soul) had to do it, here in the US with the Woodbridge label.
Perchè non lo possono fare anche in Toscana? Ed in Piemonte etc. etc.
Adesso mi vado a mettere il casco, perchè mi comincerete a tirare i sassi...

[Giampiero alias Aristide]

Grapes' prices were falling down just before the starting of harvest, specially here in Lago di Garda area (Veneto). But, soon after a couple of weeks, with stable sunshine and quality increased, they recovered.
We shout at grapes' prices made by speculators, but nobody whispers when the situation change and, under the effects of the economic situation, prices simply goes down in the range of 10 to 20 percent.
Grape growers aren't organized in any efficient trust, so thay can't negotiate effectively with big customers. As usual, they cry, but they are in most part responsible for their inefficiency.
This crisis will be healthy in order to reduce production (and players). To much wine, grapes, growers and players in the market here in Italy.

[TH]

Harsh but I think you're right, Giampiero. As you've experienced many times, there are LOTS of really poor wines made by LOTS of producers who lack talent or terroir or both. Yet they often have the effrontery to demand prices that only excellent wines should command.

[TH]

Gianni, xke' tirare sassi? Hai ragione!