Global wine production is expected to fall to a 60-year low in 2023 due to poor harvests in the southern hemisphere and some of Europe’s biggest producers, it said on Tuesday. International Organization of Viticulture and Wine (OIV), reports Reuters. Despite early frosts, torrential rains, mold or drought, global wine production will fall by 7% this year compared to last year, AFP notes. However, according to forecasts, Romania will be among the European countries that will record growth.

In initial forecasts, the OIV pegged global wine production, excluding juice and must, at between 241.7 million and 246.6 million hectoliters (ml), with an average estimate of 244.1 million hl.

That would be 7 percent less than last year and the lowest since 1961, when it fell to 214 million hectoliters, the OIV said. One hectoliter is equivalent to 133 standard bottles of wine.

Which countries will be most affected by the decrease in wine production

France, with stable production, is once again the world’s leading wine supplier, ahead of Italy, where production fell by 12%, the OIV said in its first estimate of the 2023 harvest.

Antonella di Tonno, 43, who has worked for more than twenty years as a winemaker in Loreto Aprutino in central Italy, has never experienced such a terrible harvest, with hail and long periods of torrential rain followed by severe drought.

At the end of June, “heavy hail fell on one of our six-hectare vineyards in Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, destroying 60% of its production in just a few minutes,” the owner of the Talamonti winery told AFP.

Yellowed and dry leaves, bunches of grapes covered with white mold are another scourge. Due to heat-related rains, mold has affected the vineyards, which are grown on 44 hectares on the slopes of the Gran Sasso massif in the Apennines.

Italy, with 504 grape varieties that each require different ripening times, is particularly “exposed to capricious weather, with harvests lasting more than 100 days, the longest in Europe,” the main agricultural union Coldiretti said recently.

In the Northern Hemisphere, wine production was particularly affected in some areas of Spain (where it fell by 14%) and Greece (where it fell by 45%).

In France, even if production is generally stabilizing, there are significant differences, the OIV notes.

Bordeaux and the south-west region faced the spread of mold, while Languedoc-Roussillon was hit by heat waves and drought.

“Particularly high” volumes are still expected in Cognac, Corsica and Champagne, the OIV said.

In the southern hemisphere, Australia (-24%), Argentina (-23%), Chile (-20%) and South Africa (-10%) were particularly affected.

Romania is among the EU countries that register an increase in wine production

“Only the US and a few EU countries, such as Germany, Portugal and Romania, saw favorable weather conditions that led to average or above-average volumes,” the OIV said.

Thus, according to the OIV, as for the other major wine-producing countries of the EU, growth is expected in Germany (9.0 million hl, +1% / 2022), Portugal (7.4 million hl, +8% / 2022) and Romania (4.4 ml, +15% / 2022).