1st Montepaschi Forum on Italian wine - Abstract by Francesco Bonfio

11/27/10

I applaud Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena’s initiative which could be the testing ground for the States- General of Italian Viticulture. The world of wine is in need of an assembly representative of all people involved in the wine business and committed to the refounding of the Italian wine world. I also thank the Bank for having invited Vinarius to the conference. What is Vinarius - Association of Italian Wine Shops? It gathers over one hundred wine shops and wine bars throughout Italy and promotes training and research programs, it cooperates with wine consortiums and various associations, it organizes wine tastings and tours of Italian and foreign winegrowing areas.

To answer the forum’s question, “what’s still missing?”, I think the only thing missing is consumption. Seriously though, nothing seems missing. Wine producers offer a wide assortment of wines, the media keep consumers well-informed, restaurants and wine shops provide plenty of alternatives. So, as there is a problem, what kind of problem is it?

Let’s change the question and ask ourselves: what has been missing over the years? I believe it’s inappropriate and rather inelegant to expose the faults of others, it would be far too easy to accuse wine producers of being short-sighted and not realizing that overproduction is looming ahead, or to blame the media for failing to uphold good journalism standards and retreating into the safety of uncritical and lazy reporting.

I prefer to discuss our mistakes, those made by specialist retailers, and focus on what consumers have to say. Wine shops, along with restaurants, are the final link in the wine chain and wine merchants and sommeliers are uniquely positioned to communicate with end consumers. This is an aspect most people tend to ignore, although we perform a very important and fruitful communication and popularization function on a daily basis.

If it’s true that we wine merchants deal with customers every day, communicate with them and help them expand their knowledge of wine, then it’s true that customers transmit information to us. It’s mutual give-and-take. You only have to listen to them. For example, when they made it understood that what we call Parker-style wines- the ones that, no matter what grape variety, are dark-colored, rich in structure, of great impact, with lots of oak, round palate and soft tannins- were out of fashion. Now, I’m not saying that customers said it directly to us. Customers usually know nothing about tannins, roundness, oak flavors, but they know straight away when they like a wine or not, if they enjoy it or not. Well, when the early enthusiasm for this kind of wine waned, consumers wanted to let us know that they didn’t like it. How? By not buying it anymore. They had had enough of it. They realized that these wines were enticing upon first sip but, especially when paired with food, they were perceived as over the top and not so enjoyable in the end. And the bottle remained unfinished.

Well, we ignored what they were trying to tell us and we went on paying attention to some journalists, to some wine producers and, as a result, by stocking wine that remained unsold, at a certain point we couldn’t afford to buy it anymore.

Now I come to the second mistake we’ve made in the past years. Out of laziness or convenience, we have failed to play our due role - selecting, promoting and offering wine to our customers- and we have delegated the task to wine guides. Customers have started relying on wine guide ratings: they wrote down a list of the most highly-rated wines and came to the wine shop asking for them. We simply pulled the wine down from the shelf and sold it. Wine guides were like Bibles to customers and we were like large-scale stores selling whatever was widely advertised. It took us a while to realize that we were condemning ourselves to extinction and that we were going in a direction that would have soon shown its limitations. We have to retake possession of the role that the founders of Vinarius, thirty years ago, had imagined for wine merchants. The role of talent scouts, of discoverers of quality and terroir-based wines. Wines bearing the stamp of the place where they are made, wines conveying the producer’s history, insight and passion.

I want to briefly tackle a very complex issue having to do with the market. If we produce something for the market, we have to produce whatever the market requires. This rule certainly applies to mass-market products, but not to agricultural products. Italy features a pedoclimatic configuration of the land which prevents from producing low-cost wine grapes that can compete with New World production. This is a fact we have to accept and live with. Italy can produce only grapes for high-quality and high-price wines. We cannot compete in terms of prices, but in terms of excellence, uniqueness and quality we can.

Now, I would like to go back to my role as a “popularizer” by bringing up a very topical subject, the so-called organic wines based on the idea that “what is natural is good and healthy”. Well, let me say, this is a temporary fashion. People are talking about it, some are riding the trend and we must be very careful. The prerequisite of wine is being good and reasonably priced. If the market is being saturated with organic wines which may be natural but are mediocre or even defective, we are making a big mistake because consumers will soon refuse to buy them and will become distrustful and suspicious of other wines which are good and also naturally produced.

What we notice everyday is that consumers’ purchase behavior is not fixed. It changes according to what happens around them. At present, consumers are cautious. They are willing to make purchases and do not feel threatened by high prices, but they want to know what they are buying and be convinced of their choice. Much more than in the past, consumers base their purchases on the typical American idea of “value for money”. We must not risk our credibility by giving consumers misleading information and improbable wines. Let’s be aware that a satisfied consumer becomes a repeat customer, whereas a consumer who feels cheated once will stay away from us and from wine forever. Let’s build the future of quality wine consumption together and let’s build it on firm foundations. 

Francesco Bonfio - President of Vinarius