The champagne market - Italy

1.1 Definition and presentation

Sparkling wine belongs to the effervescent wine category, which also includes sparkling wine, which, however, should not be confused with spumante and vice versa. The difference is the lower effervescence of sparkling wine compared to spumante (given the lower overpressure and therefore lower amount of dissolved carbon dioxide).

Although it sometimes happens to read "spumante and champagne" as if they were two separate types of wine, the spumante type also includes champagne, which is a specific French PDO, although it is certainly the most famous and renowned sparkling wine in the world. It would equate to Italian Prosecco, which is still a specific Italian PDO designation.

it has been predicted that from the year 2020 to 2026, the global sparkling wine market will grow, at an annual growth rate of about 6 percent. The global market is dominated by the regions of Europe and North America while Asia and Latin America still account for a smaller market share. In particular, market growth is expected to be driven by an increasing propensity of the world's population to purchase luxury products such as champagne, given increasingly higher living standards and greater affordability.

A recent world trend shows that Prosecco has downgraded Champagne from its primacy, and is now the world's best-selling sparkling wine by volume.

The Italian sparkling wine market appears to be quite developed and has excellent growth prospects. In fact, the Italian population not only has a high share of spumante consumption but also consists of a relevant number of connoisseurs and expert connoisseurs of this beverage.

In terms of production distribution, in Italy the vast majority of annual sparkling wine production is attributed to the large maisons and only a smaller share is related to cooperatives.

The most established competitors on the Italian scene are the Meregalli group with the Bollinger maison, the Ferrari maison, and the Bellavista maison.

The ever-increasing knowledge and sophistication of consumers regarding this beverage has meant that new trends have established themselves within the market, first among them the propensity on the part of the maisons to produce organic sparkling wines.