Despite a mediocre harvest, Spain will be the second largest wine producer in the world this year. 35 million hectoliters. Only Italy remains ahead, since, exceptionally, it surpasses France.
It is the third time in this century that Spain has achieved this position worldwide, after 2003 and 2013. On this occasion, the explanation lies in the disastrous French situation, whose production has fallen by 27% due to frost, to a level not seen since 1957, according to the International Organization of Vine and Wine.
In its outlook report for 2021, the institution calculates that this year will see the second worst harvest of the century worldwide. It barely exceeds the levels of 2017, another horrible year for the sector, and is 7% below the average of these last two decades.
And the main reason for this drop is due to the climatic situation in the three main wine producers: Italy, Spain and France. Although the most pronounced fall is in the Gallic country, the other two powers also suffer a setback in their production.
: France remains the undisputed leader, despite everything.
world ranking
Returning to the volume, and to better understand the dichotomy that the wine market is experiencing, the United States has strengthened its position as the fourth world power, with 6% more production.
Next in the ranking are Australia and Chile, which have both registered increases of 30% in production, which has allowed them to surpass the other great South American player, Argentina.
The countries of the southern hemisphere, as a whole, are going to reach a record level of production, with almost 20% more than the previous year, thanks to the absence of climatic incidents, which has boosted the harvests.
Because as they remember from the International Organization of Vine and Wine, in a report collected by EFE, the increases in the harvest have nothing to do with an increase in the areas dedicated to this crop.
China began a reconstruction in its wine sector of which neither the direction nor the end is intuited
And what about China? What happens with that world power in so many sectors? Well… you don’t really know. It is the great black hole in the world wine market, after a restructuring of the sector began five years ago, in which nobody intuits what its end will be or what direction it is taking.
The experts of the organization, in fact, do not even dare to present forecasts on the production of the Asian giant. In 2020, to give an example, its production fell to half of that registered in 2016.
The only thing that experts dare to advance is that it is the only country in which consumption is not going to recover, after the global setback registered in 2020 due to the pandemic.
In this sense, world consumption will rise by 2% this year, although it will not yet exceed pre-pandemic levels. The general director of the organization, the Spanish Pau Roca, is optimistic, because the sector is showing signs that it is adapting to the conditions, especially those imposed by the covid crisis.
For example, while wine represents 14% of sales of alcoholic beverages, in online commerce that percentage shoots up to 40%.
Climate change
The challenge? The challenge is the impact that climate change is going to have, the increasingly regular natural disasters.
Despite everything, it does not mean that global warming will geographically displace wine regions, for example to northern Europe. Because wine is an activity closely linked to the territory. What producers will have to do is play with the different elements to enhance results, such as vineyard varieties or cultivation practices.
Facebook Comments
Disqus