At Vinitaly he was struck by two Italian wines: the Trentodoc of Mezzacorona, one of the largest Italian wine groups and the Ben Ryè of Donnafugata, a historic and prestigious Sicilian winery "two fantastic wines, which I will have to give to my wife as soon as possible". Jack Ma, the billionaire founder and owner of the Alibaba platform not only enjoyed them with his family but decided to invest in Italian wines. And to begin with, he chose Mezzacorona as the first label to be included in the catalog of the e-commerce giant which has a turnover of tens of billions of euros and drives 80 percent of web commerce in China. “With them – Jack Ma specified -, there is already a good relationship. I really like their wines”. And to demonstrate how the relationship has consolidated over time, the Chinese tycoon paid a visit to the Mezzacorona stand where he drank a toast with the Group's President Luca Rigotti and the General Manager Fabio Maccari.
“The start of the sale – anticipated Rodrigo Cipriani Foresio, country manager for Italy, Spain and Greece of the Jack Ma site – should start in June, together with about ninety other Italian companies, which will offer their Made in Italy products. For Italian wine, which is experiencing a moment of great international success, the Mezzacorona agreement with Alibaba, which many other houses will follow, opens up interesting prospects, in fact at the moment our wines have a very low share of sales in China, just 5 percent."
The Chinese manager also announced that the "Day of wine" in China will be launched on the Alibaba platform on September 9 at 9 in the morning. The event will be called Wine, wine, wine: a name that plays with words, since in Chinese wine and nine are said in the same way.
In total, the export of Italian wine in 2015 was 90 million euros while the French one reached 870 million. The expectation that Italian wine and agri-food are placed in the agreement with Alibaba is therefore evident. “My wife – Ma confided to underline the importance of the agreements in progress – comes at least once a year to go shopping, but soon there will be 500 million middle-class people eager to buy Italian products online. The first time Marco Polo took 8 years to go and come back, today with the internet it takes 8 seconds. The Internet can transform the economy, but you have to want it”.
The Mezzacorona wine group, founded in 1904, boasts a turnover of 175 million euros and 430 employees. Most of the production goes abroad, 80% of the turnover is in fact given by exports all over the world but above all in the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Scandinavia, Canada, Japan, Russia and China.
The parent company of the group, the cooperative society Cantine Mezzacorona founded in 1904 is one of the first associations between producers born in Italy. It includes 2.400 hectares of vineyards (in Trentino and Alto Adige), for an annual production of 400 quintals of grapes. The Trentino municipality is home to the Mezzacorona Group, a group of companies dedicated to wine production that built the Cittadella del Vino, the third largest wine cellar in Italy and one of the largest in Europe.
The parent company of the group, the cooperative society Cantine Mezzacorona founded in 1904 is one of the first associations between producers born in Italy. It includes 2.400 hectares of vineyards (in Trentino and Alto Adige), for an annual production of 400 quintals of grapes.
