The influence of Coronavirus on the wine trade

Coronavirus and the wine trade

He was strolling around enjoying the early spring and decided that life wasn’t that bad.

Marten Toonder ( Dutch comic artist)

The influence of Corona on the wine trade

Are you serious? Is this a topic you should worry about? Aren’t there other things to worry about than the world wine trade with all the recent news about the Coronavirus. Maybe you’re right. But as this is a wine blog, I want to inform my readers about the impact on the wine trade of the Coronavirus in the light of the global world trade stagnation. Do we get empty wine shelves? Can we expect higher prices for wine?

Prowine Düsseldorf postponed

This week I received a message that the Prowine wine fair in Düsseldorf in Germany has been postponed. A brave decision to take of the management. This is going to cost them a lot of money. The Prowine is a huge fair where winemakers from all over the world meet wine merchants. (I wrote another blog about this fair with photos, so feel free to have a look.) Here, wines from distant continents can be discovered and trade agreements can be made. A fantastic way to discover wines in 1 place in a short time you would like to offer in your wine shop or webshop without having to travel all over the world. Here will in many cases be determined which wines will appear on the shelves of the wine stores. Does the canceling of this exhibition affect the supply in the stores? Not directly. Every wine merchant has his regular contacts and regular orders will undoubtedly continue. It will make trading a bit more difficult for the wine trade, but the consumers will not notice anything.

Empty shelves

We already saw images on the news of supermarkets in the quarantine areas with empty shelves. This does not yet apply to other areas in the world. In the Netherlands however, you see the effect that some people start storing groceries. That will not apply to wine. After all, this is not one of the primary necessities when thinking of nutrition. The supply of supermarkets, stores, and wine shops also seems to continue as usual. After all, a virus is not passed on via goods.
The supply of wines from Lombardy and Veneto from Italy is perhaps the exception, where there is a Lockdown for these regions. This may make exporting wine from Northern Italy more difficult. For wine traders who use Chinese container ships for wine transports, the delivery will also cause some delay. In spite of the fact that the ports in China are slowly recovering and at this moment ships from China have a delay of 6 weeks. Wines from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa can therefore perhaps be delivered later than planned. The expectation is that China will not have made up for its logistical backlog until this summer. We’ll have to wait and see how things will develop in the coming period. But you will not find empty wine shelves in the stores. That’s for sure.

Higher prices for wine

But what about the prices for wine? Will the problems of the Coronavirus and as a result, the stagnating world economy affect the price of wine? In other words: Can we expect higher prices for wine? I think we can conclude that this is probably not the case. Overall there are no scarcities in the wine trade in Europe and the supply will with some hiccups continue as usual. In the worst case with a delay.

In conclusion, we can state that for the wine consumer in Europe there will be little changes in the current situation. So enjoy your glass of wine.

I wish everyone, as the French say, Santé.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *