A carafe of white wine and two glasses.chrupka/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
Wine drinkers are increasingly reaching for white wines, which has producers in traditional red wine regions like Piedmont, Tuscany and the Rhône wondering how they can connect with a different wine market.
It’s worth noting that red wines continue to be popular. They are just not as popular as before. But the demand for robust reds has decreased over the past two decades, particularly in Europe, including France, Italy and Spain, according to records kept by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine.
Red and white (which includes rosés) wines have changed places in global production position since 1999. Red wine share of total production dropped from 48 per cent to 43 per cent, while white wine jumped from 46 per cent to 49 per cent.
The wine trade often credits younger consumers with boosting sales of well-made and refreshing whites, but in my estimation wine drinkers of all ages are behind the trend. White wines are often made with lower alcohol levels, with fresher characters than most reds, which means they are easy to pair with the diverse meals we eat today compared to the meat and potatoes diet of yore.
More importantly (in this economy?), white wines can be made to consistently high-quality levels while selling at lower prices than red wines of a similar pedigree.
The success of the sangiovese-based wines of Chianti and Chianti Classico make it easy to overlook the region’s bounty of white wine grape varieties, starting with vermentino, which produces some of the most popular whites in Italy. You can also find trebbiano, malvasia and vernaccia, which reaches its apex with the most famous appellation-based expression, Vernaccia di San Gimignano.
In Piedmont, bright whites made with the arnesis and cortese (responsible for wines from the Gavi region) grapes have been major players. Today, emerging stars timorasso, erbaluce and nascetta are waiting to be discovered by wine drinkers. An article in the April issue of Decanter, the British wine magazine, reports between 2008 and 2024, red grape varieties were reduced by 11 per cent, while whites increased their footprint to nearly 40 per cent of total plantings, mostly at the expense of barbera and dolcetto plantings. (Fans of Barolo, Barbaresco and other nebbiolo-based red needn’t worry about supply volumes for their liquor stores.)
Producers in the Rhône continue produce more white wine to help ln into consumer preference research and climate models. The LCBO and other bottle shops already embrace the distinctive (and well-priced) white blends made with viognier, marsanne and roussanne by the likes of Chapoutier (Belleruche), Guigal (Côtes du Rhone Blanc) and Louis Bernard (Costieres De Nimes and Côtes du Rhone labels). These varieties have also proven themselves able to cope with the southern Rhone’s hot and dry summers and overarching Mediterranean climate, which is making them a hot topic for the future of the region.
