Transition
New Zealand wine country is the first country declared free from Covid-19 and in Australia are showing signs of hope opening Bondy Beach for surfers. In Europe: Spain, France, and Italy decline the number of deaths. The information we have about Covid-19 is uncomplete and plenty of ingenious ideas appear as a solution to live with, such as wearing a homemade mask or indefinitely living in social distancing behind protective walls. The uncertainty is about the commercial path to follow. There are speculations about online wine selling and price-sensitive purchase behavior.
In the past years, we have seen trends for sustainable and biological wines. Those are standards for any well-known wine company producing high-quality wine. They are now facing new challenges in the way how their products may reach those well-informed consumers: at restaurants, at hotels, at business meetings. They are in a transition stage until June 2020. The holiday season in the North Hemisphere does not guaranty a boom in sales. The solution is not yet to come and obviously traveling is a subject of health security.
Society
Quarantine in certain countries have been a drama, especially in South America where people believe in the instructions blindly and see the phenomenon with fear. Communities losing their jobs or having no access to daily food can not hold a quarantine. Military on the streets used to keep people at their home are destroying the best from society: freedom.
When the restrictions gradually end, we will be able to estimate the long-term impact in sales and in the coming years also the trends in consumption. We should not underestimate the political impact. Important economies are under political pressure such as the United States, Brazil and China. If wine production declines in the coming years are not sure because it could also change the market with new products or new requirements due to the shift in lifestyle.
The future
We should follow the developments in the port, champagne, cava, premium wine, sweet and sherry wines. Those categories are critical for the coming years because their trade behavior helps in understanding key market changes. Climate change shows already a certain impact in wine-producing countries, however other factors in the atmosphere play a role in climate, we still do not know the real effect on wine production. Some could say that temperatures or precipitation patterns may influence the location for planting, of course, we have seen extreme examples. Those exclusive locations do not represent the future for viticulture.