2023-11-07 14:00:05
While the harvest has ended in the Northern Hemisphere, it is time for the first estimates of the level of vats in the world in 2023. Mother Nature has played tricks on many winegrowers this year. Shaken by strong disruptive weather episodes, world wine production should be around 244 million hectoliters, the lowest in sixty years, according to data published on Tuesday, November 7, by the International Vine Organization and wine (OIV). Compared to the volume put in the cellar in 2022, an already scarcely abundant vintage, the decline is estimated at 7%.
This decline should be put into perspective with the territories most affected by climatic hazards this year, in this case Italy and Spain. However, these two countries, along with France, make up the top three of the world’s largest producers. Floods, tornadoes, drought… The range of calamities that have fallen on the vineyards of the center and south of the Italian peninsula is wide, without forgetting attacks of mildew.
As a result, the trans-Alpine wine flow was reduced by 12% over one year, to 43.9 million hectoliters. This weakness allows France to dethrone Italy for once and become the world’s leading producer of wine, even though its harvest remains stable, at 45.8 million hectoliters. Still in third position, Spain is however losing ground, with production reduced by 14%, to 30.7 million hectoliters. Drought and extreme temperatures have particularly affected the wine-growing regions of Castile and La Mancha.
The United States is doing well
Even if the situation was more favorable in Germany, Portugal and Romania, ultimately European production of vinified grape juice fell by 7%, to 150 million hectoliters. The potion is even bitterer in the Southern Hemisphere, where the level of tanks has decreased by 19%, to 45 million hectoliters. None of the countries in this zone, with the exception of New Zealand, has passed through the drops of climatic hazards. Fires and drought in Chile, frosts and hurricanes in Argentina, lack of rain in Brazil, heat waves in Uruguay, excess precipitation, low temperatures and floods in Australia, the weather conditions have hardly been favorable.
In this gloomy context, the United States is doing well. The world’s fourth largest producer of various bottles saw its harvest jump by 12%, to 25.2 million hectoliters, following a year 2022, it is true, little favorable. After several years of lack of water, abundant rains favored the vineyards of Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley.
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