Facts and figures

Production figures are difficult to assemble. A few years ago I trawled though a lot of government statistics around the world and came up with a snapshot of acreage and volume over a 10 year period to 2003. It took a long time and I don’t intend to repeat the process soon. The following are some of the highlights of the study.

In 1998, Europe accounted for around 80% of the world’s wine volume with France, Italy and Spain making up 67%. Australia accounted for 3.6% and China 1.7%. Uzbekistan managed 0.71%; almost 2 ½ times more than New Zealand’s 0.29%. The UK accounted for 0.01%.

In 2003 China became the 6^th biggest wine producer, overtaking Australia by producing 1,112 million litres of wine; a 100% increase in 10 years. France decreased from 5,329 million litres to 4,735 million in the same period; an 11% drop. The EU continues to reduce acreage by paying growers to destroy generations-old vineyards. Although part of Europe, the UK still continues to ship millions of litres of low quality wine from the other side of the world where expansion is unrestrained.

World wine production peaked in 2000 at just over 38,000 million bottles. That equates to around 2 bottles every day for the entire UK population.