In Italy, more wine was drunk in the times of Mazzini and Garibaldi than nowadays. This is one of the most singular data that emerges from the analysis of Coldiretti presented at Vinitaly in Verona in relation to consumption of wine in our country. Coldiretti he explains that since the beginning of the crisis until today, one glass of wine out of five has disappeared from Italian tables and that consumption has dropped to the levels of 1861, the year of the unification of Italy.
“If abroad the problems come from imitations – underlines Coldiretti – in Italy purchases of wine by families have collapsed and national consumption has dropped to around 20 million hectoliters, behind the United States and France, with a cut of 19 % since the beginning of the crisis in 2008. If the average consumption is below 37 liters per person, only 21% of Italians drink wine every day and even almost half of Italians (48,4%) never drink it during the year“, according to Coldiretti elaborations on Istat data.
Another emblematic fact that underlines on the one hand the decline in domestic consumption but on the other hand, an export vocation of the Italian wine sector is relative to the comparison between the quantity of Italian wine consumed within our borders and that which is drunk around the world. In fact, according to Coldiretti data, the quantity of Made in Italy wine consumed within national borders was even lower than that consumed worldwide. In 2014, wine production in Italy amounted to 41 million hectoliters with a drop of 12 percent compared to the previous year which also caused the loss of the world record in wine production to the advantage of France.
