Pietro Rocchelli offers a managerial and concrete interpretation of the role of wine in large-scale retail trade: less assortative dispersion, more category discipline, and greater collaboration between industry and retailers.
In recent months, wine in large-scale retail has been the focus of much-needed reflection. It’s no longer simply a matter of recording a decline in volumes or interpreting sales trends through the lens of the economic situation. The issue is deeper: wine has lost the automatic centrality it had been recognized for years within Italian food spending.
Consumers continue to buy wine, but they do so differently. They are more selective, more price-sensitive, less willing to be guided by complex codes, and less faithful to the category’s traditional logic. At the same time, large-scale retail trade is faced with increasingly competitive space, pressure on margins, the need for rotation, and product assortments that must more precisely demonstrate their commercial utility.
In this scenario, wine can no longer simply “take up space.” It must return to producing value. To achieve this, less industry rhetoric and more method are needed. Less overlap and more purpose. Less negotiating conflict and more shared planning between retailers and the industry.
The revitalization of wine in modern Italian retail doesn’t depend on a single lever, but on a new category framework. Below is an operational handbook designed for buyers, category managers, winery sales directors, and other professionals called upon to make concrete decisions about the future of wine on the shelves.
1. Fewer labels, more purchasing function
For many years, expanding product ranges was interpreted as a sign of the category’s richness. More appellations, more wineries, more vintages, more price ranges, more regional offerings. In theory, greater depth should have generated greater value. In practice, it often produced the opposite effect: confusion, dispersion, and difficulty in choosing.
Multiplying the selection of products isn’t a strategy in itself. An overly broad assortment, if left unmanaged, risks becoming a barrier to understanding the shelf. The average supermarket consumer doesn’t always enter the wine aisle with a clear idea in mind. They’re often looking for a solution: a bottle for dinner, a wine to take to a friend’s house, a surefire gift, a reliable everyday product, a more satisfying label for a special occasion.
Each reference should therefore answer a simple question: what function does it perform in the customer’s shopping cart?
Wine can be designed for everyday use, for conviviality, as an aperitif, for individual consumption, as a gift, for cooking, for special occasions, for experimentation. But if this function isn’t clear to the buyer, the category manager, and the producer, it’s unlikely to be clear to the consumer.
Relaunching wine in large-scale retail means creating more easily accessible assortments, not necessarily smaller in absolute terms, but more coherent. Reducing redundancy can become a lever of value if it improves rotation, increases shelf awareness, and makes selection easier.
2. Price must become a language, not just a promotional lever
Price is one of the main drivers of choice in large-scale retail today. Ignoring it would be a mistake. Demonizing it would be equally so. The issue isn’t whether price matters, but how it’s used within the category.
Over the years, wine in large-scale retail has often been supported by intense promotional pressure. Promotion certainly serves a tactical purpose; it can generate traffic, accelerate sell-out, and create trial opportunities. But when it becomes the primary grammar of the category, it produces obvious side effects: it accustoms customers to waiting for discounts, weakens perceived value, makes full pricing less credible, and squeezes margins throughout the supply chain.
Price, on the other hand, should help consumers orient themselves. A good assortment structure must make the value segments recognizable: affordable entry-level, reliable mid-range, superior offering, premium or bargain bottle. In this sense, price becomes a language: it communicates positioning, intended use, and quality expectations.
The concept of everyday fair pricing deserves greater attention. It doesn’t mean abandoning promotions, but reducing dependence on them. It means building trust through consistency, stability, and clarity. Consumers must perceive that the asking price is understandable and proportionate to the value offered.
For wine, this is a crucial challenge. A category based solely on affordability risks being perceived as interchangeable. A category based on clear and consistent price points can, however, regain commercial authority.
3. Rotation is the measure of relevance
Large-scale retail is a space- and capital-intensive, management-complex system. Every linear meter must work. Every item must justify its presence. Every assortment choice must be evaluated not only in terms of image, but also of performance.
In wine, this principle has sometimes been accepted more slowly than in other categories. The cultural, territorial, and symbolic component of the product has often led to the defense of assortments built more on representation than on actual market response.
But in large-scale retail, rotation isn’t an administrative detail. It’s a relevance metric. A slow-moving wine isn’t simply a slow product: it’s a signal. It could indicate a problem with price, positioning, communication, visibility, format, brand, or consistency with the point of sale.
For this reason, sell-out must count more than sell-in. The ability to introduce a product cannot be considered a success if that product doesn’t meet real demand. The industry’s task is not just to secure space, but to demonstrate its ability to leverage it.
Rotation, of course, shouldn’t be interpreted blindly. There are products with image-building functions, premium products, seasonality, local assortments, and special occasion offerings. But even these exceptions must be managed. Advanced category management requires shared criteria, not automatic mechanisms.
4. Data and commercial sensitivity must work together
Modern retail today has much more sophisticated analytical tools than ever before. Sales data, loyalty cards, store clusters, promotional analysis, purchasing behavior, price elasticity, seasonality, and basket analysis: the wealth of information exists and is increasingly relevant.
However, data alone isn’t enough. In wine, perhaps more than in other categories, interpretive ability is essential. We need to understand not just what sells, but why it sells. Not just what slows down, but what barriers prevent purchases. Not just what price range performs, but what consumption opportunity it captures.
Wine category management can no longer be purely intuitive, nor can it become exclusively numerical. Expertise lies in integrating quantitative analysis and commercial acumen.
This means analyzing performance by territory, format, brand, channel, time of year, and consumer profile. It means distinguishing between a product that doesn’t work because it’s flawed and one that doesn’t work because it’s poorly positioned, poorly communicated, or placed in an inconsistent context.
The challenge is to move from descriptive to project-based management. Don’t just measure the past, but use data to build more effective assortments, more selective promotions, easier-to-read shelves, and more targeted initiatives.
5. From negotiation to category partnership
The relationship between industry and distribution has historically been based on a strong negotiating dynamic: terms, price lists, discounts, grants, space, promotions, and end-of-year bonuses. This aspect will remain part of the system, but it can no longer be the only one.
If wine wants to return to growth in large-scale retail, the relationship between wineries and retailers must evolve toward a category partnership. It’s not enough to discuss how much space to secure. We need to ask ourselves what value to generate with that space.
Collaboration may involve data sharing, building assortment clusters, designing initiatives for consumption occasions, developing simple information materials, using retail media, and defining less disruptive promotions that are more consistent with category objectives.
Manufacturers must no longer present themselves simply as product suppliers, but as experts. They must be able to explain which consumers they’re targeting, what needs they meet, what price range they serve, what role they play on the shelf, and what contribution they can make to the category.
Likewise, large-scale retail cannot limit itself to price comparisons. If wine is treated exclusively as a commodity, it will be difficult to expect consumers to perceive it as a valuable category.
6. Simplify the language without impoverishing the product
One of the key issues with wine in large-scale retail is language. The contemporary consumer doesn’t necessarily reject wine. They reject unnecessary complexity. They reject shelves that are difficult to decipher, labels that are hard to understand, self-referential messages, unexplained technicalities, and names that don’t translate into a concrete choice.
This doesn’t mean trivializing wine. It means making it accessible. Wine culture shouldn’t be used as a barrier, but as a tool for orientation.
In large-scale retail, communication must be essential, functional, and immediate. Consumers must quickly understand whether a given wine is suitable for a casual dinner, an aperitif, a fish dish, a barbecue, a gift, an everyday occasion, or a more important occasion.
Telling the story of the territory remains important, but it must be linked to a perceivable benefit. The name remains important, but it must facilitate choice. The brand remains important, but it must build trust. Storytelling remains important, but it must be concrete.
Wine must return to being a natural part of shopping, not an exception. It must become part of the ordinary habits of contemporary consumption without losing its identity.
7. Retail media, digital and augmented shelf
An increasingly relevant topic is the role of digital within large-scale retail trade. Wine is a category that can greatly benefit from lightweight information tools, if designed intelligently.
QR codes, short content, pairing suggestions, essential videos, simplified descriptions, paths by consumption occasion, integration with apps and loyalty programs can help reduce the distance between product and consumer.
The point isn’t to transform the wine department into a complex or hyper-technological environment. On the contrary, digital technology should serve to simplify things. It should answer the questions customers ask themselves when they’re standing at the shelf: Which one should I choose? How should I pair it? What occasion is it suitable for? Why does it cost more than another? What makes it different?
Retail media can become an important lever for wineries too, but only if used consistently with the category strategy. Gaining visibility isn’t enough. It’s important to craft relevant, measurable messages that are linked to purchasing behavior.
8. The new generations require new interpretations
The relationship between wine and the younger generations is one of the most sensitive issues. It’s not simply a matter of “convincing young people to drink wine.” The issue is broader: wine must find a language compatible with new lifestyles, new social gatherings, and new consumption priorities.
Younger generations are often less attached to traditional wine rituals. They’re drawn to more immediate products, less codified experiences, more direct languages, more flexible formats, and less formal drinking occasions.
This doesn’t mean distorting wine, but rather rethinking its presentation. Wine can be an aperitif, a convivial experience, an everyday dish, a discovery, an accessible gift, a shared experience. But it must be presented in a more accessible way.
Continuing to speak only with the codes of the past risks further narrowing the audience. Wine must regain authority without becoming intimidating. It must maintain depth without turning it into complication.
9. The recovery requires shared responsibility
Large-scale retail trade cannot simply treat wine like any other category. Wine has a history, a cultural value, a connection to the territory, and a symbolic weight that require attention. But at the same time, the industry cannot continue to offer overlapping, self-referential, and poorly legible ranges, expecting the shelf to solve the problem.
Reviving wine in modern Italian distribution requires shared responsibility. Retailers need more advanced management, capable of going beyond pure promotional logic. Producers need greater commercial discipline, clearer positioning, and a better ability to address the real needs of consumers.
We don’t need ideological revolutions. We need coherent choices. Less assortment noise, more functionality. Less indiscriminate promotion, more perceived value. Less negotiating conflict, more planning. Less self-referentiality, more listening to the market.
Wine will only return to the forefront if it is relevant
Wine will not return to the forefront of large-scale retail trade because it has been in the past. The category’s historical profitability is no longer sufficient. The memory of consumption is not enough to guarantee its future.
To regain relevance, wine must adapt to the present without losing its identity. It must speak better to consumers, perform better on the shelf, generate better performance for retailers, and create greater value for the industry.
Large-scale retail trade remains one of the most important venues for measuring consumption. It’s there that wine encounters the everyday consumer, the one who doesn’t necessarily read specialized magazines, attend trade fairs, or possess advanced technical expertise, yet can still choose a bottle if it’s understandable, coherent, and relevant.
It is from this point that a new era can begin. Not from regret for what wine has been, but from the ability to make it useful, understandable, and desirable again in the present of modern distribution.
