Italy promoting its wines in China.

The Italian government declared that they are putting on the plate 1,5 millions of Euros for the promotional plan in China, scheduled for the next months. A consistent part of this budget will be targeted to an institutional campaign for wine.

The government considers a priority to develop partnership and agreement for the distribution of Italian products in China, but the request coming from the enterprises was for a strong promotion of Italian wines, to send the message that Italy does not produce only fashion and design, and it has what it takes to compete with France on the same ground, even through this country is the only known player known by everybody in the Chinese market.

Italy always faced a strong weakness against its main competitor, France: the “Bel Paese” is know in Asia more for its famous fashion brands than for his food and wine. The trend is changing and more people started to recognize the high quality of Italian food but not a lot of them know that Italy is the biggest wine producer in the world.

That’s the main reason why the Italian companies in the wine sector, asked the Italian government – and specifically to the Ministry of Economic Development – a plan of strong promotional actions to explain the link between Italy and wine, before exploring the (big) differences between the wine production in the different Italian regions, which the average Chinese consumer cannot even locate on the map!

What the Italian government is trying to do, in partnership with the associations in the sector, is not just an institutional promotional initiative, but an events calendar to promote not directly the Italian wines, but the Italian cuisine first, because the Italian cuisine is not yet enough known in China to support the wine. Summing up, the goal will be the promotion and training of kitchen staffs and sommeliers to give them a better understanding of Italian food and wine, so that they will become the promoters of Italian products.