Imogen Calderwood
SPANISH wine production shot up 41% last year thanks to a wet spring and sunny summer.
With vineyards producing 50 million hectolitres, enough to fill 6.7 billion bottles of wine, Spain produced even more wine than France at 42 million hectolitres and Italy at 47 million.
For years Spain has lagged behind France and Italy despite having the ‘largest planted surface of vineyards in the world’.
Angel Ortega, representative of wine-growers in La Mancha, put the bumper crop down to unusual weather conditions.
“It’s not often that you see all the right climate conditions come together like that,” he said.
“There’s a good side and bad side. To have more production means it’s always a bit more difficult to sell. The good part is that our competitors didn’t have an especially good year.”
A bit more difficult to sell – at any price. There is a huge wine glut not only in Europe but across the world.
I buy excellent vin ordinaire – Cote de Rhone and a Languedoc @ €1.70 a bottle, stonkingly good, indeed better than wines I was paying £5-6 per bottle before we left in 2001.
How the hell does the grower make any money at these prices. Spain,France and Italy will have to cut back production. In France and I believe Italy the governments have to buy up excess production and turn it into straight alcohol – of course all this is paid for by the European tax payer – supply and demand as always.