Identikit of wine consumers in the BRIC countries
Chinese people love designed labels, and even in the wine they’re looking for the idea of status symbol and luxury: in short, “Brunello di Montalcino and Barolo as Valentino and Prada”. The Brazilians love to experiment with new labels while the Russians are willing to spend big money. This is the identikit of new global consumers, potential markets of the future reference for the Italian wine. In Europe, wine consumption has recently stabilized, but it is outside Europe that the trend is positive: the United States is projected to reach 29 million hectoliters (+ 5%) while China registered a consumption growth of 9 percent.
This is still far from the European trend, in fact to the more than 37 liters Italians oppose the lack liter of the Chineses, the few centilitres of Indians, 1 abundant liter of Brazilians and about 10 liters of the Russians, but it is growing.
However, these data are concerning the entire population, most of which does not drink wine: the individual consumption in the biggest and in the richest cities is close to those of other consumer countries.
If it is true that the new world powers, the so-called BRIC countries, represent a potential pool of billions of consumers, it is equally true that it is not easy to get into these markets, because in some cases they are the countries where the wine is not part of the food tradition, and because the made in Italy must fight with international competitors. BRIC is an acronym used in international economics which refers to Brazil · Russia · India · China.
Starting from China, one of the most promising and difficult market in the world. Here the consumer, in most cases, is completely alien, from the historical and cultural point of view, to the consumption of wine. Wine has arrived in China relatively few years ago , and it is destined, for the moment, to a small niche of the new rich people, who are looking for a status symbol of belonging to the Western lifestyle. It is hard to accustom the Chinese middle class to wine drinking, because it is very conservative. The reaction times to the wine, the Italian one in particular, are slow, because the wines-icon are especially the French ones, present in China for over twenty years, while our labels have yet to be accredited definitively in this sense.
Different the case of Russia: the consumer of Italian wines belongs to a medium-high and cosmopolitan target, living mainly in big cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, and used to travel often in Italy. Even for the Russians our labels represent a status symbol, linked to the Italian lifestyle. Thanks to the frequent visits of our country, they know more and more denominations and terroir of our house and, even if they are willing to spend big bucks, they do it more and more with knowledge of the facts: they love to show off but they are unwilling to be fooled.
In Brazil, however, the interest in wine is growing slowly, but steadily: here the traditional drinks are in fact beer and cachaça, respectively with 54 liters and 11 liters per person per year, while wine reaches about 2, 5 liters per person. Brazil, being also a producer, is promoting internal actions to increase responsible wine consumption. Here to drink wine are definitely the niche of the wealthy people, but also the new middle class, which did not exist before and which today is increasingly informed and prepared. However, it remains totally foreign to the consumption of wine the great mass of the population. The Italian wine – Italy is the fourth largest exporter in Brazil, with a market share of 14 per cent – has a privileged image among Brazilian consumers, even for cultural proximity to Italy, thanks to the many immigrants from our country.
The Tuscan wine makes the lion’s share, especially the Chianti, they are also very popular Prosecco and Lambrusco but it remains a critical heavy duty system that makes the green and gold market among the most expensive in the world.
Finally, India: a market that has just opened to the wine, and in which the target group of consumers is expanding, although still niche, mainly because of a very high taxation system that selects potential buyers, belonging to an economy class of a very high level. Even here, the wine is ordered and drunk especially in restaurants and luxury hotels, but thanks to the long colonial tradition of Anglo-Saxon, the western habits, compared to China, are much more widespread and accepted.
Panjim Goa, India, wine shop in the centre
