Excellent results for the Gallo Nero market: for the seventh year running a positive sales trend for Chianti Classico with an overall increase of 48.5% since 2009, the darkest year of the worldwide recession. In 2016 285,500 hectolitres of Chianti Classico were sold, the best result of the last decade.
For the second year in a row, sales of Chianti Classico in Italy have also increased: the national market accounts for 22% of overall sales of Gallo Nero wines, making it the DOCG’s second biggest market after the USA.
This is the economic overview of Chianti Classico, one of Tuscany’s – and Italy’s – leading winemaking zones, which will present a preview tasting of the 2016 and 2015 vintages and the 2014 Riserva alongside new Gran Selezione products, at the Chianti Classico Collection.
“We are very satisfied with the well-established position of Chianti Classico on international markets and the renewed interest from the Italian market,” says Sergio Zingarelli, Chairman of the producers’ association. “A result which rewards the time-consuming work of relaunching the DOCG zone in recent years, culminating in the presentation of Gran Selezione, the new type of Chianti Classico, on the market in 2014. This great wine has raised the quality of our designation and met with great critical success, thus helping consolidate Chianti Classico’s place among the best wines in the world”.
“We have said goodbye to a very intense year,” continues Chairman Zingarelli. “I remember 2016 as the year of our denomination’s Three Hundredth Anniversary, a year rich in important events that helped develop and consolidate the image of Gallo Nero in Italy and around the world. Today we have great challenges ahead: the formation of the Chianti rural district and the UNESCO world heritage candidacy are just two examples of projects underway to enhance the value of our area”.
To return to the analysis of the Gallo Nero wine markets, since the second half of 2015 the Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico has been equipped with a new system to accurately monitor the presence, position and price of its products (the three typologies are vintage, Riserva and Gran Selezione) on international markets: this method has enabled us to verify the widespread global sales of Chianti Classico.
Investigation of Gallo Nero sales reveals extremely widespread sales distribution: Chianti Classico is exported almost all over the world. While sales are still strongly rooted in the traditional markets, Chianti Classico also reaches more unusual destinations, beyond the usual commercial routes, in all continents.
Regarding the traditional markets, the USA was once again in the lead in 2016 with 32% of total sales (+1% compared to 2015), followed by Italy with 22% (+2%) and Germany with 13% (+1%). Canada is next (8%), then the UK and Scandinavia (both 5%), and lastly Switzerland, Japan, Benelux, China and Hong Kong, Russia and France.
Ninety-three years after it was created, the members of the Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico, the first wine producers’ association in Italy, have risen to 580, 376 of which are estates presenting their own labels on the market.
Today the Chianti Classico area can rightly be defined as a true “productive district” counting on numbers worthy of a large company, and a global turnover estimated at over 700 million euro, bottled wine production values of about 400 million euro, and lastly olive oil production equal to 10 million euro.