The Wine Crisis: Strategies to Address It

The wine crisis affects consumption, exports, and the economic sustainability of wineries. Understanding the causes means observing how people’s habits, relationships with new generations, and market conditions are changing. Packaging can also contribute to the response, through choices that combine lightness, recognizability, and supply flexibility.

The wine crisis in Italy stems from the overlap of multiple factors: pressure on purchasing power is compounded by commercial difficulties, climate uncertainty, and changes in consumption opportunities. For companies, the result is a more complex balance between quantities sold, costs, and margins.

In this scenario, every choice requires attention: from product positioning to distribution, all the way to the bottle. For SAIDA GROUP, supporting wineries means offering concrete tools to enhance wine while respecting the economic and operational needs of each project.

According to preliminary OIV estimates, wine consumption in Italy will have fallen to 20.2 million hectoliters in 2025, a 9.4% decrease compared to 2024. This figure is part of an international trend: in the same year, global consumption is estimated at 208 million hectoliters, a decrease of 2.7%.

On the export front, the Unione Italiana Vini Observatory, based on ISTAT data, records a 6.2% decline in value and 4% in volume in the first half of 2026, with an average price reduction of 2.3%. The difficulties therefore affect both exported quantities and the average value of sales.

Domestic consumption and exports refer to different periods, but they describe pressures that wineries must face simultaneously. To understand the wine market crisis, however, the numbers must be read alongside the accompanying economic and social changes.

1. Purchasing Power, Tariffs, and Margin Pressure

Pressure on household budgets affects spending decisions. In international markets, tariffs, trade tensions, and exchange rate fluctuations make sales planning more complex. The OIV identifies economic conditions and trade policies as some of the factors that have penalized trade in 2025.

When demand slows, it becomes more difficult to maintain a balance between prices, volumes, and profitability. Therefore, from our perspective, competitiveness must be built by evaluating the entire project: purchasing costs, inventory management, logistics, and the product’s ability to express its value.

2. Climate change and high inventories: why producing less is not enough

Climate events are making production quantities, timing, and results more uncertain. According to the OIV, in 2025, world production remained low for the third consecutive year, partly due to weather conditions.

Lower production does not automatically eliminate surpluses. In the analysis published by Unione Italiana Vini in July 2026, based on data from Cantina Italia, total wine and must inventories exceeded 53 million hectoliters, compared to a 2025 harvest of 44.4 million hectoliters.

It is important to interpret these numbers correctly: inventories also include wines undergoing aging and supplies necessary for normal commercial activity. Therefore, not everything in the cellar represents unsold product or surplus.

The problem arises when the market absorbs wine more slowly than it is produced and made available. The new harvest is adding to previous vintages’ stocks, while slowing sales are hindering their disposal. Furthermore, demand varies across types, denominations, and price ranges: an overall decline in production can coexist with oversupply in some segments.

For wineries, longer product retention in warehouses can translate into tied-up capital, storage costs, and less liquidity for new investments. The need to free up space and resources can also increase commercial pressure on prices.

The UIV also reports the use of downgrading: in 2025, this affected 6.6 million hectoliters of PDO and PGI wines. The move to lower categories may facilitate sales, but it does not eliminate the available wine and can increase competition in the common wine segment.

From our perspective, this scenario makes coordinating sales, bottling, and packaging procurement even more important. Being able to purchase bottles in small quantities helps plan supplies based on actual needs, limiting further resource tying up for packaging materials.

This is also the approach taken by the SAIDA GROUP service, with deliveries starting from a single pallet throughout Italy: a concrete opportunity to manage purchasing with greater flexibility.

3. More occasional consumption and greater attention to moderation

Wine occupies a different place in the habits of Italians. The UIV-Vinitaly report presented in March 2026 describes a consumer base of nearly 30 million, substantially stable over the last five years, but with profoundly changed consumption patterns.

Among consumers, 61% drink wine occasionally and 39% daily: a ratio almost inverse to 2006. The same analysis also links the decline in quantities to more moderate behavior, evident among older segments of the population.

For producers, this change requires a better understanding of the occasions on which wine is chosen and the expectations it must meet.

4. Young People and the Wine Crisis: How the Relationship with the Product Is Changing

The relationship between young people and wine deserves careful reading. Attributing the crisis to a general lack of interest is not supported by the Italian UIV-Vinitaly analysis of March 2026: among 18-24 year-olds, the share of those who declare they consume wine has risen from 39% to 47% compared to 2011. Their share of overall volumes is also affected by the smaller demographic of the younger generations.

The issue therefore also concerns the sector’s ability to engage with new audiences. An in-depth study by Corriere Vinicolo, reprinted by UIV, highlights how overly specialized languages A sense of exclusivity can create distance. Accessible experiences, pouring, and comprehensible communication are highlighted as tools to facilitate an encounter with wine.

For GRUPPO SAIDA, this evolution makes packaging capable of communicating clearly important. Shape, proportions, label, and closure must work together to make the product recognizable and its presentation consistent with its intended audience.

If you want a young audience, you must communicate appropriately. Many of our clients have designed product lines aimed at young people, with custom-made packaging, often combining the packaging with creative communication and in-cellar experiences designed to appeal to this type of audience.

5. Wine prices in restaurants: when choice becomes less accessible

The final price in restaurants is another element of the debate on the wine crisis. The FIPE-UIV survey, presented in April 2026 and conducted on 500 businesses, reveals signs of a decline in spending and wine volumes consumed. It also highlights wine lists being updated less than once a year in 54% of cases, and a lack of wine education in approximately a third of establishments.

In an interview with Gambero Rosso in September 2025, Alessandro Rossi, wine director at Partesa, warned of the risk that rising prices for entry-level menu items could alienate young people, especially. This professional assessment highlights the issue of affordability, without proving that markups are the sole cause of the decline.

In our view, maintaining a diversified offering across price ranges helps make wine accessible to different occasions and budgets. Sales by the glass, a carefully curated selection, and service that explains the product can encourage an informed choice, protecting the value of wine and the work of the restaurant industry.

Packaging can contribute to wineries’ competitiveness through targeted choices. Its role involves visual identity, operational management, and financial investment.

The starting question is concrete: Which bottle enhances the wine and is consistent with the winery’s commercial strategy?

The answer requires considering weight, design, price, compatibility with bottling, transportation, and purchase quantities.

Lightweighting is one of the directions the industry is working on. The Sustainable Wine Roundtable’s Bottle Weight Accord sets a goal for its members to reduce the average weight of 750 ml bottles for still wines to less than 420 grams by the end of 2026. This voluntary commitment demonstrates the attention of leading international operators to this issue.

For GRUPPO SAIDA, premium positioning can be achieved through proportions, details, and overall packaging consistency. Lightness thus becomes part of a project that maintains personality and recognizability.

Supporting producers means providing alternatives suited to different sizes, budgets, and objectives. Our contribution combines collection development, catalog breadth, and service flexibility.

• Light Premium Collection: lightness, design, and positioning: The Light Premium Collection was created to combine weight reduction and distinctive design. It is dedicated to wineries seeking lightweight bottles capable of enhancing the perceived value of their wine and its market positioning.
• Low minimum orders and deliveries throughout Italy: GRUPPO SAIDA delivers even a single pallet throughout the country. This flexibility makes our solutions accessible to small wineries and limited production runs, helping them tailor purchases to actual needs. In a period of less predictable sales, being able to purchase small quantities can help limit inventories and tied up capital.
• Proprietary collections and national exclusivity for Estal: In addition to our proprietary premium collections, we offer exclusive national distribution of Estal bottles. This offering also includes products made from Wild Glass – 100% post-consumer recycled glass, for projects that focus on sustainability.

This variety allows us to identify solutions consistent with the wine’s identity and the winery’s differentiation needs.

Our role as a distributor allows us to offer glass bottles for still wines from various glassworks.

We can compare technical specifications, availability, and pricing, seeking the best quality/price ratio for each customer among the various suppliers on the market, without any restrictions and with clear comparative advantages for the customer. This breadth of choice complements our exclusive collections (such as the Horizon and Lympha) with an extensive range of standard products.

The wine crisis requires collaboration between producers, suppliers, distributors, and restaurateurs. Each operator can contribute their expertise, helping to preserve the value of the product and the economic sustainability of businesses.

For SAIDA GROUP, being a reliable and structured partner means listening to wineries and offering concrete solutions: lightweight bottles, distinctive collections, standard alternatives, and flexible supplies, even starting from a single pallet.

Want to find the most suitable packaging for your wines? Contact our team and tell us about your project.