Italian drinks giant Zonin1821 has launched an academy to promote the culture and values of wine. Louis Thomas discovered more from group vice president Francesco Zonin at this year’s Vinitaly. “The market cannot evolve without the culture and value of the wine world,” Zonin explained. “First of all, ‘wine’ is a word that means different things – one of the most difficult parts of the wine business is how fragmented it is, in terms of consumers and productions. In Italy, the number of appellations we have is a nightmare to understand, even for an Italian! Then you have Spain, France, the US, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand etc. – the whole system is quite confusing, but it has plenty of nice stories of family history and values, and the culture that we were born into [in Italy], but maybe isn’t there in Japan, and without that culture and tradition it is harder to understand some wines.” For Zonin1821, which has a turnover of approximately €200 million, exporting 85% of its production (according to 2022 data from the company), it hopes to educate people on both “value” and “history” in the wine world, especially through the lens of ‘Made in Italy’, the national initiative to promote Italian businesses and products. “The idea is not only to continue to developing our export network, which is now at 140 countries, but to change how we interact with our consumers and our partners,” he continued. “The chain between producer and consumer is pretty long, so
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Wine
