Italy’s top wine lobbyist backs targeted vine removals in oversupplied regions

Lamberto Frescobaldi, the president of Unione Italiana Vini, Italy’s main wine trade association, has opened the door to subsidized vineyard removals in areas where wine production no longer has a market, marking a shift in a debate that has divided the Italian wine sector for months.

Speaking to WineNews, Frescobaldi said uprooting vines may now be necessary in some places, but only if it is paired with a plan to protect farmers and rural communities. Until now, he had largely resisted the idea of a broad vine-pull scheme and had instead pushed other measures to reduce production, including lower yields for generic wines and a stop to new planting authorizations.

“I have always been very cold on the issue of uprooting,” Frescobaldi said, according to WineNews. “Then it is also true that there are areas that climbed onto the wine wagon over the years, and now they can no longer cope. So let’s uproot where there is a need, but with a Plan B to protect farmers.”

The change comes as Italy’s wine industry faces a growing imbalance between supply and demand. According to “Cantina Italia” data compiled by Icqrf, the Italian agricultural inspection body, wineries in Italy still held 42.6 million hectoliters of wine on July 31, up 6.9% from the same date in 2025. The figures have added urgency to a debate over how to manage production in a country that remains one of the world’s largest wine producers but is also dealing with weaker demand in parts of the market.

The question is especially sensitive because any national policy to pay growers to remove vineyards could hit some regions harder than others. Frescobaldi has argued that a blanket measure would be too crude for a sector with wide differences in quality, export strength and local economics. Some appellations and producers are still growing despite the broader slowdown, while others, especially in lower-value segments, are struggling to sell what they make.

In a recent interview with Corriere della Sera’s Florence edition, Frescobaldi described vineyard removals as “inevitable, but dangerous.” In his comments to WineNews, he expanded on that warning and said the risk goes beyond wine production itself. In some rural areas, he said, the vineyard supports the wider local economy and even basic services.

“We need to sit down with the organizations to understand what farmers can do if the vineyard is removed,” he said. “Because in certain areas, if the vineyard disappears, the local economy disappears, the bar disappears, the medical office disappears.”

His concern is that paying farmers to pull up vines without offering them a viable alternative could accelerate land abandonment. Frescobaldi said 56,000 hectares of agricultural land are already being abandoned every year in Italy, or 560,000 hectares over a decade. He also warned against policies that would weaken vineyards in hillside and mountain areas, where production costs are higher than on the plains and where agriculture often plays an important role in maintaining the landscape and local population.

He said that if removals move forward, policymakers should make sure they do not end up stripping out the most fragile and costly vineyard areas first. Those sites are often less competitive in purely economic terms, but they are also important to the social and environmental balance of rural Italy.

The debate over uprooting has grown as earlier proposals have shown their limits. Frescobaldi had previously focused on reducing yields for generic wines, a move that many in the sector consider difficult to apply and in some regions economically unsustainable because local growers depend on volume as well as price. He also backed stopping new vineyard authorizations, another controversial step because a generalized freeze could penalize producers and denominations that continue to perform well even in a weaker market.

His latest position suggests that the trade association may now be looking for a more selective approach. Instead of a national plan applied equally across the country, the idea would be to allow vineyard removals only where oversupply is most acute and only alongside support measures that prevent social and economic damage.

Frescobaldi also pointed to another issue that, in his view, distorts the market and should be addressed before the sector turns too quickly to uprooting. He said parts of Italy still do not have a completed vineyard cadastre, the official registry that tracks vineyard plantings and production. He added that it is no longer acceptable for table grapes that cannot be sold for fresh consumption to end up being turned into wine.

“There is a part of Italy where the vineyard cadastre has not been completed,” he said, according to WineNews. “And it is no longer admissible that there are table grapes that for some reason, because they cannot be sold, become wine. Just by regulating this properly, things would improve.”

That remark touches on a long-running concern in the Italian industry: that incomplete controls and weak traceability in some areas can make it harder to manage supply and protect market balance. For producers who have argued against drastic measures, better enforcement and more accurate data are seen as a necessary first step.

The issue is expected to return to the agenda at the next supply-chain roundtable after Italy’s parliamentary summer recess. That meeting is likely to bring together trade groups and other industry bodies as the country moves deeper into the harvest period, when estimates for the new vintage and the size of unsold stocks will shape the next phase of the discussion.

For now, Frescobaldi’s position signals an important change in tone from one of the most visible voices in Italian wine. He is not calling for a general uprooting plan, but he is acknowledging that in some parts of the country, pulling up vines may no longer be avoided. His condition is that farmers not be left with cash for removal and no future use for their land.

That balance is likely to define the next fight inside the Italian wine industry: how to reduce supply in a shrinking market without hollowing out the rural economies that vineyards have helped sustain.