April 27: After two volatile years 2017 and 2018 which saw a record high production of 294 Million hL, the global wine production saw a drop of 12% at 260 million HL, thus bringing it in line with the world average production in this millennium whereas the consumption has been estimated at 244 million- practically same as last year, according to Pau Roca, Director General of OIV, who conducted a web conference from his office in Paris last week, writes Subhash Arora
Roca was addressing the web conference for the first time, thanks to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. He apologised for the technical difficulties as about 3000 people had logged on. He also conceded that at this early stage the information and statistical data available was insufficient to provide an accurate forecast and anticipate the scenario of the viti-viniculture sector in the future. However, thanks to permanent contact with the Organisation Member States, the OIV had certain qualitative information at its disposal.
Surface area at 7.4 million hA has been more less constant since 2011, which has been coming down during the previous decade.
60% production of the world has been in the EU. Italy (47.5MhL) which has been the leading producer for the last 5 years, continues to be the leader, followed by France (42.1MhL), Spain (33.5 MhL), US (24.3 MhL), Argentina (13 MhL) are the 5 biggest producers with 62% of total production. Top 8 producers accounted for 75% of the total production.
USA continues to be the top consumer (33 MhL), followed by France (26.5 MhL), Italy (22.6 MhL), Germany (20.4 MhL) and China (17.8MhL) have been the top 5 consumers whereas the per capita consumption is led by Portugal (56.4 liters) followed by France (49.5 liters), Italy (43 liters) Switzerland (36.5 liters) and Hungary (29.7 liters). (It may be noticed that Vatican City is not considered in this analysis.)
The world wine export market has expanded both in volume, estimated at 105.8 MhL (+1.7%), and in value with €31.8 bn (+0.9%).
First estimates of wine production in the southern hemisphere indicate low expected volumes for 2020 for the majority of countries (exception for South Africa and Uruguay).
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Meanwhile Covid-19 is creating havoc in terms of sales and consumption in every country including India. Take the case of France where the producers have started requesting permission to distil the unsaleable overstocks of wine. "It is difficult to quantify overstocks when we don't know when and how lockdown will end. If someone is in a position to tell me the right price and volume for distillation, I’d like to hear from them!” said Stéphane Héraud, chairman of the General Association of Wine Production (AGPV), according to a report by Vitisphere.
For weeks, politicians across France’s wine regions have been mulling over crisis distillation measures sparked by the coronavirus, and currently estimate the surplus at 3 million hectolitres of wine. AGPV has been focusing primarily on distillation as a means of emptying tanks before the harvest and is calling for a subsidy of €80 per hectolitre for wines with a protected designation of origin (PDO) and geographical indication (PGI).
In India, there have been hardly any sales during the period of Lockdown that was imposed generally on March 24 this year and using the Disaster Management Act 2005, which overrides the powers of otherwise independently acting States for the Sales and Pricing of wines, the sale of wine and liquor is banned all over India. Even though there have been some areas where sales have been allowed during the last couple of days, there has been a strict ban on alcohol sales, resulting in heavy bootlegging and even thefts and robberies in practically all big cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore.
Subhash Arora
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