Vineyards Magazine

France, wine country, lost its lustre in the last report of the OIV, which is overcome by Italy.

The conclusion of the Organisation mondiale du vignoble et du vin (OIV) confirm that the surfaces of vineyards continue to decline worldwide only with exception of South America.

This phenomenon combined with bad weather, led to the production of wine at “very low levels,” said the OIV.

Italy is ahead of France

Italy is ahead of France OIV estimated, this week, that the wine production this year will reach 248.2 million hectoliters, a “net decrease of 16 million hectoliters compared to 2011.” In this classification, the European Union remains far ahead, but surprisingly, Italy rose largest producer with 40.8 million hectoliters – despite a 3% decline compared to 2011 – ahead of France. France has a sharp decline to 40.7 million hectoliters (-9.3 Mhl compared to 2011). Spanish production amount at 31.5 million hectoliters. United States is the fourth largest wine producer in the world.

In Europe, where the EU has lost 270,000 hectares of wines due to the grubbing-up premiums granted for three consecutive years, only Portugal and Greece saw their surfaces grow.

Growth slowed almost everywhere

The situation is no better in the world: the growth rate of planted areas in the southern hemisphere and the United States has slowed since several campaigns against the movement of expansion observed around the year 2000. The North American production remains up in 2012 (20.5 million Mhl, 7%), but this is small compared to its level of 2011 emphasizes the OIV.
Only South America continues its development in particular Argentina (2000 ha), Brazil and Chile. This one even reaches a record of level production of 10.6 million hectoliters (up 15.5% compared to 2010).
Finally, OIV finds that the growth of Chinese vineyards tends to diminish and erosion observed since 2006 continued in South Africa and particularly Australia (12,000 hectares lost in 2012, 162 million).

Henry borzi