December
10 , 2008
Italy Expected
to Be the Top Wine Producing Country of 2008
Italian Wine
News
Roma, Lazio
December 10th
An article from the Italian daily Corriere della Sera
reports that this year’s harvest was one for the record
books, una vendemmia da record, as Italy is believed
to have surpassed France, making once again make the Bel
Paese the top producing wine country in the world. The
news comes a few days from the conclusion of all harvest activities
across the country, which came to a close with the late-November
picking of Nebbiolo grapes in the Valtellina area.
The deadline set by the European Union for each member country
to report on harvest activity was recently pushed to January
15, 2009 and the official numbers usually made available by
ISTAT—Italy’s National Institute for Research
and Statistics—will not be published until the new year,
however preliminary figures show that after a 10 year waiting
period Italy seems to have surpassed France in quantity, therefore
potentially making it the first wine producing country in
the world. According to Coldiretti and the European
Commission estimates in France harvest activity seems to have
decreased 5% from 2007, equal to a total 44.4 million hectoliters,
while in Italy production is estimated to have increased 8%
with almost 47 million hectoliters in total. The estimates
reported by Assoenologi —the Italian National
Enologist Association— are a bit more conservative,
predicting only a 5% increase of production, but still confirming
the take over of neighboring France.
In spite of the overall boom, Italy is still far from the
50.6 million hectoliters produced during the last decade,
proof of a unanimous dedication to quality from the country’s
producers. Quality that this year promises to be great, as
described by Giuseppe Martelli, General Director of Assoenologi
who reported that although at first “the bizarre vegetative
cycle that characterized 2008 seemed to have split the country
in two until the end of June to favor mostly the southern
regions, until perfect weather conditions in September and
October stabilized the situation, to turn the things completely
for the North.” A great vintage, therefore, to be expected
especially from the northern regions of the country, such
as Trentino-Alto
Adige and Friuli-Venezia
Giulia for whites, or Toscana
and Piemonte
that began harvesting their noble red varietals in the third
week of September.
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