approximately 10.3 million liters. Sales in large-scale retail trade are down 2.5% in the first six months of the year, especially for still and sparkling wines, while sparkling wines are up 4.2%. Average prices are down, with a market that is struggling to move up in the range of wines to buy. However, there is a new trend, that of fine wines , with more and more Italians interested in organic wines and who see wines as a form of investment. Fine wines are driving the market a lot, if not in volumes, certainly in overall turnover, which sees an increasingly important slice made up of collectible wines. Blockchain, with its cryptographic security features, is also emerging in the wine sector for its undeniable ability to improve traceability and control of the truthfulness of product information. These are intelligent labels that allow the buyer to acquire information about the production, the method used and the salient characteristics of Speaking of definitive data, and therefore of 2023, the identikit of the wine consumer in Italy is very different from that of a few years ago. The increase in female demand is evident, 10%, and the decrease in male demand, -3% . The so-called daily consumption even drops by 22%, with the exception of those who abuse it in a pathological way, and is therefore not included in the official statistics of the Wine Observatory. Among daily consumers, the category of over 65s remains as a hard core, which alone is worth 40% of the total. At a geographical level, Emilia Romagna remains at the top, with 61.3% of the inhabitants who consume wine, ahead of Valle d'Aosta, 60.5% and Tuscany with 60.4%. The province of Trento is the one with the greatest growth, 11%, and Basilicata the one with the greatest contraction, -9%. In general, the North-East is the area with the greatest wine consumption, 59.4% of the population, followed by the Center with 57.4%, the North-West with 56.7%, the South with 51.1% and the Islands with 46.8%.
