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Article Excerpt
During the years from 1970 on, in which the drop in alcohol consumption occurred, Italy was experiencing a number of extraordinary changes in working conditions, family structures and family roles; also new consumption patterns and new lifestyles took over. These changes need to be taken into account when we attempt to understand the reasons why Italians changed their alcohol drinking habits, particularly as far as wine was concerned.
At a general level, we may consider how cultural and symbolic changes involving wine might be involved. In Italy, in rural and pre-industrial times, wine was not only important for its socializing properties, but it was also considered a significant product from a nutritional and even pharmaceutical point of view (as a remedy against certain illnesses). Such beliefs would have favored the consumption of wine, both within the family household and in the working environment.
On the contrary, during the first industrialization period in the late 1800s, new company owners had good cause to fight the overdrinking habit. On the one hand, this habit decreased the efficiency of workers who drank too much wine, and on the other the owners decried "the evil influence the growing number of taverns had on the conduct and character of the workers" (Pela & Sorcinelli 1999, p. 289).
Also, as a consequence of the industrialization process that had taken place during the 1950s and 1960s, production requirements "moderated" the alcohol consumption of the new generations of workers who, abandoning their rural dwellings, sought work in factories.
Wine drinking started decreasing from 1970 to the present, and has continued in this direction. We believe that the decrease of the first period, when the fall in amount of wine drunk first appeared in the 1970s, was affected by the new organization of work by mass production, and the massive urbanization process. These two main factors contributed to drastically changing people's behavior also in terms of their eating.
During the second period (1980s-1990s), wine consumption continued to decrease, despite the fact that there was no longer migration to the cities, and the services sector overtook the industrial sector. Other factors which have had an effect on alcohol consumption included a new awareness of one's health, as well as a tendency to favor higher quality products.
Each of the above-mentioned elements also produced several side-effects that, in turn, became factors in explaining the consumption reduction. Some examples of this included the improvement in education levels, changes in the traditional woman's role and in the family structure, and greater consumer choice possibilities.
Market, prices and consumption of wine
In 1982, an econometric study was published that specifically investigated the relationship between costs, income and wine consumption compared to the consumption of other alcoholic beverages and food items in Italy (Cianferoni 1982). Another study (Corsi 1977) analyzed a set of economic factors that influenced the shift from "quantity "to "quality" wine in Italy. During the 1970s, wine production in Italy was still high, despite an internal drop in demand (-10% during the 1970s). The internal market during these years was strongly aided by the large growth in export levels, which nearly trebled during the years 1979-1981 in comparison to 1969-1971. The percentage of exported wine of the total quantity of wine produced grew from 7% in 1970 to 17% in 1980 and to 27% in 1982. This growth in exports almost exclusively concerned low-quality wine, which had become competitive in the international marketplace, following the devaluation of the Italian lire with respect to the currency of countries to which Italian wine was traditionally exported. At the end of the 1970s, 40% of wine exports went to France, which used it for raising the alcoholic content of its own wines (in competition with southern French wines), and 25% went to Germany. During these years, more than two-thirds of exported wine was consequently reaching the European market.
Between 1976 and 1979, following the European economic recession, and also due to the "wine war" between France and Italy, the European Commission took measures to reduce wine production as a part of agricultural policy. These were further enforced in 1982 with actions that tended to discourage the production of low-quality wine, and encourage the closing down of vineyards, using economic incentive schemes.
During the years 1989-91, significantly less wine was produced in Italy (-27% compared to 1979-1981). A considerable reduction in land for wine-producing grapes was recorded by agricultural censuses between 1982 and 1990. This was due to the combined effects of less Italian exports, lower wine consumption in Italy, and European agricultural policies, which produced the opposite situation to what had taken place during the production boom of the previous decade.
The export trade, already reduced in 1983, suffered a further setback in 1986, the year in which the methanol scandal occurred (-38% exports in one year alone). During these years, on a worldwide level, wine consumption was drifting towards high-quality wine consumption, at the expense of Italian exports. European monetary policies acted along the same lines in the mid-1980s, when the Italian lira was over-valued in real terms, because of higher inflation rates compared to other countries. Italian wine exports to France collapsed, while those to Germany stagnated, and continue to do so today.
However, the production decline was still not enough to compensate for the heavy reduction in internal consumption and, during the 1980s, external consumption as well. For this reason, in certain years, up to 30% of wine production was removed from the market and diverted to distillation.
All of these negative indicators, as well as the analyses by agricultural economists, and the identification of new consumer choice patterns, pushed the Italian market towards the production of higher quality wine. This process started during the 1970s, but was still confined to only a few very high-quality vineyards. In 1968, "Sassicaia", the new Italian Cabernet Sauvignon, entered the market with only 3,000 bottles, and in just 10 years, it was awarded first prize as 1978's best Cabernet, out of 32 worldwide competitors, by the well-recognized wine-trade magazine "Decanter". The production of Italian DOC "denominazione di origine controllata" (controlled origin label) wines grew during the 1980s, and more and more DOCG "denominazione di origine controllata e garantita" (controlled and warranted origin label) wines were created. The policy of quality over quantity expanded during the 1980s and the 1990s. Indeed, export levels of high-quality Italian wine grew so strongly towards the end of the 1980s, especially in non-European markets, that it actually reached 50% of total wine export levels; this counter-balanced internal consumption reduction, helping the producers to cope with the still decreasing demand during the 1990s.
Table 1 addresses the effects of prices and Italian income levels on the consumption of food items, among them wine, from 1926 to 1980. We can see how wine consumption prices dropped, in real terms, even when compared to other food items. Price trends in bread were most similar to those of wine (lower in 1950 and higher in 1979); milk had cost less than wine, but in recent years has nearly caught up with it. Meat had always cost more than wine, but the difference with respect to wine had grown, so much so that in 1979, the difference ratio with respect to wine had almost trebled compared to 1940.
In 1980, the unit price of alcohol derived from common table wine was lower than that of all other alcoholic beverages, about half the price of high-quality wines, and a ninth of the price of strong spirits. On the whole, therefore, during the rises and falls in its consumption (in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s), wine could be considered to be a reasonably-priced drink. In percentage terms, the price of wine had notably dropped, from 15.6% of family food expenses and 9.7% of total family expenditure in 1926 to 5.2% and 1.6% respectively in 1978. These values have not been very different in recent years. We can therefore deduce that wine consumption in the late 1970s was not limited by income levels (see Cianferoni 1982). Even 20 years later, we can say other factors than price intervened in the consumption decrease, like emerging health awareness, and changes in consumer choices, with the latter being more concerned about quality rather than quantity.
Urbanization and mass migrations
Between 1951 and 1971, the Italian population underwent a migration process that had never occurred before: millions of people moved from the countryside to towns, and from southern...
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