The Grandi Vini d’Italia Group has come of age by Valeria Ciccotti

The Grandi Vini d’Italia Group has turned 21. In Risano, Friuli, just a few miles from Udine, the eight partners in the consortium founded in 1987 met at the elegant 17th century Villa Agricola at the Pighin estate to celebrate their 21 happy years together and, as has been their habit for all those years, they held their annual end-of-January meeting.
The meeting was not only a time to celebrate but also to take a look at the recent progress the Pighin company has made. Naturally there was a tour of the Capriva estate in Collio (just a few hundred yards from the border with Slovenia) and of the more extensive vineyards in Risano, plus a visit to the Pighin cellars and of course a tasting of the “newcomers” to be presented at Vinitaly.
There were two rich business lunches at two prestigious venues, La Frasca and Da Nando, where—icing on the cake—guests were amazed by a visit to one of the most renowned and important collections (not just in Italy) of great wines from every time and place.
Michele Chiarlo, Tommasi of Villa Girardi, Gianluca Bisol, Antonio Zaccheo of Carpineto, Aleardo Mantellassi, Umberto Cesari, Gianfranco Garofoli and, naturally, Fernando and Roberto Pighin had a fine time looking for their own bottles among the 200,000 in the collection.
Afterward, off to listen to the report by the consortium’s president, Antonio Mario Zaccheo, who among other things was unanimously re-elected to head the group for the next three years. Here is Zaccheo’s report:

Dear friends, the 21st assembly of our consortium falls in a year that began under the sign of the greatest political and economic uncertainty, both in Italy and worldwide. Just reading the newspapers makes you aware of the difficulties: a weak dollar and pound, expectations of a recession in the United States with its global consequences, a super euro that stymies exports, high energy costs that push inflation, the market’s inability to accept price increases and therefore big problems in reabsorbing costs, and so forth.
In our long life as a consortium, however, we have already gone through crisis and hardship situations, and so this time, too, we have to go ahead with our plans, leveraging our experience and the good distribution our products enjoy and above all trying not to waver from the reasonable optimism we so much need.
And despite the aforementioned, the year just ended, 2007, was certainly a good one: the total worth of our exports was around 791,000 euro, meaning a nearly 24% increase from the previous year.
However, the complexity and variety of the countries we sell to require closer looks.
Strangely enough, the biggest increases were precisely in the Eastern European countries like Latvia, Poland and Russia where we have made smaller investments than we did in Asia; this is undoubtedly because their habits are much closer to ours. In Asia a distinction has to be made: the good results came, not surprisingly, in those areas where we have a brand manager, that is, in Thailand and in Singapore. In the former the increase was a whopping 400%, but then we started from a very weak situation, while in Singapore, where we were already strong, the increase was 83%.
This was quite a considerable increment, confirming the wisdom of the decisions made in 2007 to bring in someone who could nudge the market, constantly working on the presence of our brands so they could somewhat erode the market share traditionally held by Australia, France and the USA. Still disappointing, however, is the situation on the Indian market, much talked about but meager in results. China, on the other hand, would seem to be (finally) on an upswing, except for a bad performance this year.
To date our Giovanni Oliva, in Singapore, has been on the job for only six months and, considering the time it took to organize and get onto these markets—anything but easy—I would say that results have been good. The current year will certainly give us a clearer picture, but I am sure that he will do a good job and, despite the problems, get good results.
In 2007 we exported to 17 countries, the year before to 16, and, as you know, we already have business relations with 21.
Our group’s consolidated exports (including direct sales not going through the Consortium) to Asia—China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, India, Maldives, Indonesia, Brunei, Philippines and Cambodia—amounted to 788,525 euros, compared with the 576,850 registered in the previous year, meaning an increase of 36%.
Two new countries have been added to the list, Estonia and Portugal.
A separate mention for Peru, a very difficult country in which our Nancy has become the most prestigious importer of fine Italian wines.
Today our Convivium reaches 86 nations (in 2004 they numbered 84).

Group picture in the Pighin vineyard

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