2026-06-19
Luca Cuzziol, founder of GrandiVini and a founding partner of Excellence SIDI, said Italy’s wine industry is facing a deeper structural shift than many producers and institutions appear willing to acknowledge, warning that treating the horeca channel as secondary would be a serious mistake at a time when sales volumes are falling.
In an interview published Thursday, Cuzziol said the first five months of 2026 have not been uniformly negative for the wineries his company distributes. He said value has been broadly stable, with some cases showing modest growth and only a limited number posting clear losses in value. The bigger problem, he said, is volume, which is often down sharply. In his view, that split shows that wineries that have built pricing power and brand value can still protect revenue even as they sell fewer bottles.
Cuzziol said horeca, the hotel, restaurant and catering trade, now accounts for less than about 30% of total Italian wine sales, but remains critical for value creation and brand awareness. For premium and super-premium wines, he estimated the channel represents roughly 7%-8% of total sales revenue. While that share may look small on paper, he said it remains decisive for the broader positioning of Italian wine.
His comments come as parts of the trade debate whether restaurants still matter as much as they once did for wine producers. Cuzziol rejected that idea, arguing that the channel continues to support both margins and image even in a weaker market. For beverage companies facing lower volumes, that view points to a practical commercial question: whether protecting restaurant placements and on-premise visibility may help preserve value better than chasing volume alone.
At the same time, he said relations between producers and restaurateurs have rarely been so strained. He blamed both sides for widening the gap. Some restaurants have applied excessive markups, he said, but many wineries have also raised release prices sharply in recent years, often without clear justification tied to costs or market positioning.
He cited examples of wines that left the cellar at €15 not long ago and now sell from wineries at €25 to €28. Once those increases move through restaurant wine lists, he said, bottles that used to appear at €40 can end up at €60 or more, making them much harder to sell at a time when many consumers are under pressure.
Cuzziol argued that weak cost analysis inside many wine businesses has contributed to arbitrary pricing decisions. In his assessment, too many companies still lack rigorous managerial practices and serious business planning. He said years of tax advantages and European support measures helped parts of the sector grow without forcing enough improvement in management skills. That has left the Italian wine system fragile in ways that concern him more than current market swings.
He also criticized what he sees as a slow response from institutions and trade bodies. According to Cuzziol, many continue to repeat old routines even though the market environment has changed in more fundamental ways. He described the current phase not as a temporary downturn but as a profound change requiring new commercial and promotional approaches.
The wineries holding up best, he said, tend to share several traits: distinctive products, recognizable brands, clear communication and management teams able to understand market dynamics and work constructively with distributors. He said dialogue between producer and distributor is essential because it gives wineries a more realistic picture of what buyers, retailers and consumers actually want.
In some cases, Cuzziol said, distributors have had to push wineries to rethink packaging because producers were not fully aware of market expectations. Without strong outside feedback, he said, many companies end up relying too heavily on their own assumptions or on sales agents who may be overruled by producers.
He also pointed to weaknesses in Italy’s denomination system and consortia. In his view, appellations are finding it harder to represent the diversity that should be one of Italian wine’s main strengths. He said consortia too often end up speaking for a narrow group of established players rather than presenting a broader and stronger image of each denomination.
Cuzziol said the sector may now be entering a period of sharp selection among producers, a process he suggested may be unavoidable and in some respects even desirable. He called for more realistic analysis of the industry’s condition and warned against minimizing the seriousness of the moment.
He also urged closer coordination between wineries and horeca operators, saying no part of the supply chain can navigate this phase alone. That message carries wider implications across drinks markets: when consumption slows, pricing discipline, stronger management and tighter coordination with on-premise partners can become central to defending brand value rather than simply trying to recover lost volume.