ABSTRACT
One hundred years ago, some decades after the political unification of the country (1861), Italy had 150 breweries of various dimensions, scattered all over the country with a total output of over 156,000 hectolitres (hl.). Today, the number of plants has fallen to twentythree, with a noticeable-by Italian standards-growth in production, amounting to nearly 15 million hl. in 1995. The average output per plant has thus grown from little more than 1,000 hl. to over half a million during the same period (Gourvish and Wood 1994). On the demand side, per capita consumption grew from little more than half a litre at the end of the nineteenth century to 23 litres in 1990 (Table 2.1), though it is clearly inferior to that of wine, despite the latter’s current crisis.
