JESI A week after Vinitaly, Tenute Pieralisi Azienda Agricola Monte Schiavo di Maiolati, an important organic wine producer in the Marche region, leaves the Marche Wine Protection Institute, a consortium that promotes 16 out of 20 regional denominations, associates over 500 companies and represents 89% of bottled wine.
Andrea Pieralisi, CEO, why this radical decision?
«Because the world of wine is in crisis and is experiencing profound changes. This requires entrepreneurs and agricultural companies in the Marche to make serious decisions which should be based on economic-cyclical assessments with the support of the IMT which, however, is not offering it.”
How do you perceive this crisis?
«Let’s leave aside the problem of stalled international markets, I will simply note the decline in domestic consumption. Just look at the tables in restaurants: there are more carafes of loose wine and beer than bottles. It is the fault of the economic crisis, of the loss of purchasing power of families, between bills and inflation, but also of the changes taking place in consumer behavior which are influencing wine purchases. A scenario that will have serious consequences on a sector like ours, where wine companies are very small, costs have skyrocketed, yields have dropped and interest rates have increased.”
But what does the IMT have to do with it?
«Despite its name, I no longer feel protected and I don’t understand what more the Consortium can give me».
How do you not feel protected?
«Let’s take the Terre Cortesi-Moncaro problem which was not addressed either before Vinitaly or after».
How does the Moncaro cooperative connect with IMT?
«It is the first wine cooperative in the Marche, it has hundreds of members, it handles 10 million bottles, it is positioned in supermarkets and it seems that it is changing some of its commercial policies which will influence Verdicchio, our main wine».
But these are internal problems within a company…
«It is not the usual company and it is not its positioning in large-scale distribution that makes it interesting, but the fact that we are in a problematic moment and it is the largest collector of wine from the Marche region which has a positive effect on prices. If Moncaro does not act as a price regulator, the risk is that they will collapse and that the market will impose a very low price, which will not cover the production costs for a wine that will always remain of high quality and will send many companies into default. This is why the Moncaro problem and its consequences must be addressed, especially if its decline leads to the arrival of other realities.”
Let me explain better…
«The risk is that the situation will escalate to the point where perhaps another cooperative from another region will have to intervene. And, at that point, we would have the most important DOC of the Marche and many other DOCs that will have to stop at other logics perhaps contrary to the interests of the Marche producers”.
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