Recent patterns in world vineyard area, wine production and wine consumption

The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) recently released its annual world industry summary: State of the World Vine and Wine Sector in 2024. There are always parts of it that seem of particular interest, and I will look at three of these here.

Let’s start with recent changes in the world’s vineyard surface area, which are shown in the first graph (taken from the report).

As you can see, this has been decreasing for quite some time, from a high in 2003. It is currently c. 90% of its recent high. (Note that the OIV graphs never have zero as their bottom axis, which looks somewhat misleading to me.) As has been repeatedly noted in the wine-industry literature, vineyard area is much larger than can be supported by the current wine consumption, and so the decrease in area will presumably continue for quite some time yet.

Obviously, wine production is related to vineyard surface area. However, production has not shown a similar continuous decline, as illustrated in the next graph (taken from the report).

The graph shows that, since 2003, global wine production has varied up and down around an average of c. 270 mhl (million hectoliters). This sounds like a classic case of over-production (the same amount of wine coming from a decreasing area). This has lead to a dramatic decrease in production over the past couple of years, so that 2024 production was only c. 75% of the 2018 peak (and that peak was the same as for 2003).

Note also that the 2022 production was c. 90% of the 2003 high, as would be expected from the decreasing vineyard surface area; so, we need to look for another cause of the decline since 2022. The most obvious place to look for this would be wine consumption, as illustrated in the next graph (taken from the report).

This shows that the recent high-point for consumption was during the decade from 2007 to 2017, when it varied around 245 mhl (million hectoliters). Since then, it has been all downhill, so that the 2024 level was c. 90% of the 2017 high.

More importantly, there has been a dramatic decrease in consumption since 2021. So, the decrease by the producers has clearly been a response to the behaviour of the consumers. Notably, it has been reported that global wine consumption is back to 1961 levels, which should be a wake-up call for the industry.

We can also consider which countries have been contributing to these patterns. Here, 51% of the world vineyard area lies in just five countries: Spain, France, China, Italy and Turkey (in decreasing order). So, these are the ones that will be most affected by the decline in the wine industry.

The pattern for production as reported by the OIV excludes juices and musts, and so wine production does not follow the vineyard area pattern. Here, 58% of the world wine production comes from just four countries: Italy, France, Spain and the USA (in decreasing order).

Wine consumption, on the other hand, is somewhat different. Here, 51% of wine consumption occurs in five countries: the USA, France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. This pattern is obviously related to population size. However, France and Italy do produce a lot of wine because their people drink a lot of it. The same cannot be said of the USA, Germany and the UK, which need to import a lot of the stuff.

This importation fact is currently riling the President of the USA, who wants to tax the imported booze even more than it has been in the past (How American alcohol importers are adapting to the tariff rollercoaster). Indeed, in the above graph we can look at US wine consumption over the past century or so (from: the Wine Institute). There was a notable dip during the second half of the 1980s, but otherwise it has continued upwards until 2022 (and 2023 also continued downwards — not shown).

Apparently, the President’s idea is that the USA can produce all of its own wine needs. This seems unlikely, given recent patterns in grape crush in California, as shown in the next graph (from: Lightest crop in 20 years). The issue here is whether the crush should be increased or decreased for the good of the California wine business (How bad is wine’s oversupply problem?).

On a different note, China is an interesting part of the global wine industry, and potentially an important one given its population size (2025: 17% of the world total). Here, both production and consumption have decreased from a peak in c. 2012–2013, as shown in the next graph (from: What’s happened to the wine market in China?).

Indeed, China’s share of world wine production by volume was 5.5% in 2012 but was 0.8% in 2022; and its share of world wine consumption was 7.5% in 2012 but was 2.4% in 2022. These are pretty serious drops, which the wine industry needs to take note of. Moreover, wine’s share of China’s alcohol consumption was 4.6% in 2012 but was only 1.5% in 2022 (grain-based drinks dominate, including beer).

Clearly, the wine industry will need to look to other populous countries, like India (Which wine regions are finding success in India, and why?). The USA apparently need not look anywhere, just at the moment (How America ruined its enviable position in global drinks culture).

So, there you have it. Things are on the downward path in the world wine industry. This is not news to you, but now I have put some numbers on it.

The oldest known vines, and an interview with myself

Digressive Preamble

Recently, I did an audio interview for The Wonderful World of Wine (WWW). This show is hosted by Mark Lenzi And Kim Simone, and “explores all things wine with you: trends, news, education, and so much more.” You should check it out.

Episode 249 of their series is the interview with:

David Morrison, who is a data expert in the world of wine and has been passionately writing about it for years, garnering a large following of wine enthusiasts around the globe. With his extensive knowledge and unique perspective, David has become a trusted authority in the wine data industry.

Sounds good to me! The interview recording can be found on their SoundCloud channel, and on their Youtube channel.

This follows the interview I did a year ago with Wine For Normal People, episode 424 on Youtube.

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Oldest recorded vines and vineyards

At roughly the same time as this interview, I also did an online presentation for the Old Vine Conference. According to the conference agenda, David covered: “how he used the old vine registry to analyse the distribution of old vineyards around the world, and created some charts.”

On The Wine Gourd blog, I covered a lot of this material in two earlier posts:

• Where in the world are the oldest vineyards and wineries?
• Which countries have most of the oldest vineyards?

However, there were some things that did not appear in those posts, and I cover some of this information here.

Many of you will have encountered The Old Vine Registry recently, which is an ambitious plan to catalogue the world’s oldest vines as a fully searchable and updatable online database. It officially launched on June 28 2023 (Old Vine Registry launched), as: “the world’s first crowd-sourced global database of living historic vineyard sites.” Its goal is: “to create the world’s most authoritative record of these vineyards in the hopes that, through greater awareness and attention, these vineyards and the wines they produce will survive and thrive.”

There have been a number of web sites introducing the concept, but the best of them is by one of the participants, Alder Yarrow (Vinography Wine Blog): Introducing the Old Vine Registry. You should read this if you have not already done so.

There is no legal or generally agreed definition for “old” (Old vine), but the Old Vine Conference uses a minimum vine age of 35 years. So, the Registry notes that: “Vineyards that have been left to grow and thrive beyond that 35-year mark can officially be considered old.” Yarrow observes that: “We have about 2,200 records of old vine vineyards … There should be another 10,000 from around the world added by the time we’re done.”

On this age basis, most of the current data come from Portugal (822 recorded vineyards), followed by Spain (383), the United States (334), Australia (208), and France (142).

However, here I am going to be more strict than this. Below, I have summarized those records for vines that are at least 125 years old. There are currently 150 such records, which may be more than you expected, even globally. The oldest recorded vineyard is c. 600 years old (in Germany), with another three at c. 450 (Georgia, Germany, Slovenia), and one at 350 years (Italy).

The full collection of vine ages (>125) is shown in this graph. This is pretty impressive, of course; but we should note that there are actually 34 known trees with verified ages that are more than twice that of the oldest grapevine (ie. 1,200+ years) (List of oldest trees).

We can also look at which countries these oldest vines come from. Here is a table listing the vineyard count for each of the relevant countries.

Note that 32% of these vines are in the United States of America, and 19% are in Australia. The New World outshines the Old World, when it comes to vineyard preservation! Not unexpectedly, all of the USA vineyards are in California. Here is a list of the vineyard count for each of the relevant counties. Note that 50% are in Sonoma county.

Old vines (and their vineyards) have interest both for their contribution to agricultural history and biodiversity; but they do also have other more immediate practical uses for the wine industry. For example, Enrico Marcolungo (store manager, Shrine to the Vine) sees old vines as being “one of the most effective marketing tools” there is at the moment. “It definitely adds interest to the conversation when you are recommending wine” (Wynns debate: Buyers on Coonawarra’s premium potential). Try it for yourself.

Which countries have most of the oldest vineyards?

Last week, I looked at Where in the world are the oldest vineyards and wineries? This week, I will look at the oldest vineyards in more detail, using the same dataset. As we will see, these vineyards vary from country to country, but not necessarily in the way that we might expect. Indeed, there are apparently only 14 UNESCO–listed vineyard sites around the world.

I will start by noting that some of the oldest vines are in Georgia and Slovenia, not unexpectedly, given their long history — indeed, wine is believed to have originally come from Georgia and the Caucasus region (and then spread from there to Greece and Italy). So, these days, Georgia has two of the oldest vine collections, at 400 and 250 years old, while Slovenia has a well-known single (massive) vine of 150 years of age. However, England claims to have the largest single grape-vine in the world (called The Great Vine), which is now 255 years old (as shown in this picture).

Below, I have produced a series of graphs, each one showing the ancient vineyards for a particular country. Each graph point represents one vineyard from the Old Vine Registry database. These vineyards are between 50 and 300 years old (horizontally), with their area shown vertically (note the logarithmic scale). Sadly, not every vineyard has its area listed in the database, so that they cannot all be shown in the relevant graph — the number of vineyards graphed out of the database total for that country is listed at the top of each graph.

France is the biggest wine producer in the world, and we might therefore expect the French to have preserved much of their vinous heritage. However, they have not really done so, at least compared to many of the other countries listed below.

Even more notably, given that Italy is the second biggest wine producer, it has done very poorly at preserving its vinous heritage. Indeed, this graph is somewhat embarrassing — the locals apparently do not value the concept of old vines. It is perhaps worth noting, though, that there is one vineyard with plants that are 350 years old (and thus not in the graph).

In many ways, Spain is the big gun in the world of old vineyards. The next graph shows you that there are oodles of them, especially compared to France and Italy. In this sense, Spain has been a very conservative country viticulturally, and thus preserved its vinous heritage well.

Notably, the USA also has many older vineyards, almost as many as Spain (although area data are missing for half of them). This situation may surprise a lot of people, since the USA has a reputation for constant renewal (ie. the infamous “disposable society”). However, the vinous heritage has clearly been of importance to many Americans, for which we can all be pleased.

Like the USA, Australia also has managed to keep quite a few of its oldest vineyards. Indeed, relatively speaking, it has actually done somewhat better, in terms of numbers. Who has been copying whom?

Portugal has the oddest graph of the lot, as shown next. Last week, I pointed out three peaks in vineyard numbers based on age, at 1930, 1960 and 1970, attributing them as simply being approximate years (rather than accurate records). However, a commentator on that post noted: “there is something very interesting going on in Portugal in 1930 and 1970 that led to hundreds of vineyards being planted in those years in the Douro region ... it's super odd to see so many producers with a 1930 planting and a 1970 planting, over and over and over again. I'm thinking government subsidies, or something like that”. This odd pattern is clearly evident as the two vertical rows of points in the next graph. An explanation would be very interesting to read, if anyone knows one.

Chile has an old vinous heritage, and it has managed to keep quite a few of its oldest vineyards.  Indeed, it has more of the world’s oldest ones than any other country — at least half a dozen are >150 years old, including one quite large vineyard.

Argentina has many fewer old vineyards, compared to Chile, and so has done less than it probably could have.

Compared to many other countries, South Africa has also not done very well at preserving its older vineyards. Indeed, it is the worst of the world’s large wine-producing countries.

Given its long heritage, Germany has also not done well at preserving much of its heritage. Indeed, it makes even Italy look good. It has been good at keeping its old castles, for the tourists to look at, but the vineyards near them along the scenic rivers are much more recent. It is perhaps worth noting, though, that there is one vineyard with plants that are nearly 400 years old and another at 600 years old (not graphed).

Finally, we come to Turkey, one of the oldest wine-making places on the planet. Therefore, it is good to see that it still has some of the oldest vineyards, as well as one very large old vineyard (at the top of the graph). However, the latter is noted in the database as being communal: “an area of 1,980 hectares, with 120 households and 774 people.” Sadly, this is not to say that there are no problems with the current old-vine situation in the country; see: Turkey's old vines: a disappearing delight.

So, the older vineyards are not randomly distributed among the wine-making regions of the world. Some places have definitely done better than others at preserving their vinous heritage.

Where in the world are the oldest vineyards and wineries?

This title is actually two separate questions, because the oldest wineries are not necessarily associated with the oldest vineyards, and vice versa. So, I need two lots of data to answer this question, at the global level.

Wine-making itself goes back a very long way, of course. It has been noted (The oldest vineyard in the world is 6,100 years old) that:

The Greeks had Dionysus — the ancient Greek god of wine, among other things — who was worshipped as early as 1,500—11,000 BCE and is referenced in the works of Homer and Aesop. Mentions of wine can be traced back to Georgia in 6,000 BCE, Iran in 5,000 BCE and Sicily in 4,000 BCE; and the Egyptians also tried their hand at winemaking with all kinds of grapes, as well as with figs, dates and pomegranates. The alcohol is even mentioned 231 times in biblical literature. 

It was during a 2007 research expedition in Armenia ... that a drinking bowl, grape seeds, desiccated vines, pottery sherds and fermentation jars were discovered and dated as 6,100 years old ... This discovery is said to be the earliest example of wine production — with the grapes in question most likely the Vitis vinifera species, according to botanists.

However, there are no extant wineries this old. Indeed, the World Atlas tells us that The oldest wineries in the world are apparently as shown in the table above. According to this information, Germany has by far the oldest known winery (at 1,161 years old), with France also having one at c. 1,000 years old. Italy’s oldest seems to be 882 years old. By comparison, Spain’s is only 474 years old, with Switzerland right behind. Outside Europe, Mexico’s oldest is 426 years old, and South Africa’s is 335 years old.

However, as I noted, this has little to do with the oldest vineyards. Plants have an upper limit to their life-times, and we cannot expect the above sorts of numbers for their ages. For this reason, there is an Old Vine Registry available online, which lists information about all of the known old vineyards. To quote from the website:

The Old Vine Registry is a grassroots, volunteer effort inspired and begun by wine critic Jancis Robinson and several of her colleagues. Robinson first started writing about the heritage of old vines more than 15 years ago, and in 2010 she and writer Tamlyn Currin began compiling a registry of old vines, triggered by a growing sense that these old vineyards were important elements of cultural and scientific heritage, as well as the source of some particularly beautiful wine. 

The launch of the Old Vine Conference provoked a lot of interest in the Old Vine Registry, and it got to the point where all parties involved realised they needed something more searchable, more accessible, more elegant, and more useful. The project needed to become an online database, somewhere people could go to find old vineyards, learn about them, track down the wines made from them and the people farming them. With the help of Alder Yarrow, author of Vinography.com ... (who handily has a background in digital marketing and user experience), funding was found, talented developers were tracked down, and under Yarrow’s direction, the real Old Vine Registry was born.

By and large, the Registry lists vineyards that are at least 35 years old, with currently more than 2,650 entries listed worldwide. I will explore these data in more detail in future blog posts; but for now let’s simply take an overview of the oldest vineyards. The graph above shows a count of how many vineyards there are for each of the ages greater than 50 years old. (Note that the vertical axis is on a logarithmic scale.) Surprisingly, there are 2,335 such vineyards, scattered over the whole globe. Seriously, would you have guessed such a large number?

It is worth noting, as an aside, that not all of the actual ages are necessarily perfectly precise. For example, you can see that there are three odd peaks in the data (ie. the top three points in the graph). These three points denote vineyards listed as being planted in 1930, 1960 and 1970, respectively. Clearly, these are simply approximate times, presumably based on memory rather than written records. [Update: please see the first Comment below.] However, the other entries seem to be quite precise.

Anyway, here is the list of the locations and ages of the very oldest vineyards. You will note that eastern Europe gets mixed in with Germany and Italy, in comparison to the above list of wineries, and that France and Spain are quite some way down the list. Note, also, that only the top 5 vineyards would actually make it onto the wineries list, and that none of these are actually in that list, anyway. The oldest wineries and vineyards really are not connected at all.

Thanks to Alder Yarrow for providing me with direct access to The Old Vine Registry’s data.

How could any wine-lover deny the idea of terroir?

Terroir is apparently an endlessly discussed topic in the wine industry, so why should I not throw in my 2-cents worth? So, that is what I will do, here.

As I looked outside my window back in March, at the farm-field across the road, I could see the snow lying to different depths and melting at different rates, even within this single field, depending on the orientation of the land. At this latitude (mid Sweden), it matters whether the field slopes south (towards the sun), or north (away from it), or even east or west (morning sun versus evening sun). This effect of local climate conditions is just blatantly obvious.

Do these sorts of differences affect the crop that grows on this field? Well, that seems to depend on what that crop is — for some crops it does seem to matter. Grapes are one crop for which there is a strong claim that it matters quite often, although the nearest commercial grape-vines to my house happen to be 2 hours’ drive away (Blaxsta Vingård; see: Swedish wineries — who'd have thought it?). *

This concept of local variability, whether caused by climate or geology, is often called by its French name: terroir. (Wordnik: The aggregate characteristics of the environment in which a food or wine is produced, including regional and local climate, soil, and topography.)

I should start by noting that in the science of ecology this variability is called local habitat, and it is a basic concept. All plants and animals, and also microbes, have a habitat. Sometimes, a particular species has a very broad habitat, covering thousands of miles, and sometimes it is incredibly restricted, covering less than a mile. Nevertheless, as an ecological scientist I have always accepted the concept of each species having a habitat as being self-evident.

The most widespread species on Earth is Homo sapiens; and humans seem to be determined to demonstrate that they can live anywhere, under any conditions — but we do have to wear different clothes and live in different types of houses, depending on where on the planet we are at any given moment. Most other species cannot afford this luxury, and so they have to live where the local habitat happens to suit them. For example, we often hear about the local weather, and its effect on grape growing — things such as this (The ocean phenomenon shaping great SA wines): “Occasionally we see the phrase ‘maritime influence’ come into play, where regions and vineyards close to our coastlines are affected by sea breezes, which can cool and moderate temperatures during the grape ripening seasons.”

However, while weather is a big overall determining factor for plant growth, it is not the only thing that affects plant habitat. I have always assumed that grape-vines have a habitat, even if the wine industry calls this idea “terroir”, instead. That habitat may be different for different grape-vine cultivars, and the habitat may affect those cultivars in different ways; but that just means that the wine industry is clearly and inextricably linked to nature. The basic question of interest to us, then, is: does the terroir affect the taste of the resulting wine, as well as affecting the growth of the grape-vines themselves?

A classic example of the discussion of terroir is that of Bordeaux (Terroir and climate of Bordeaux, Dirty little secret about the soil):

   The terroir of Bordeaux is more than just the soil. There are a variety of factors to consider that create the special terroir of Bordeaux. For example, the climate with its weather, exposure to sunlight, ambient temperatures in the air and in the soil, elevation, natural drainage, access to water, the ability of the soil to retain water in the dry vintages and allow for natural drainage in the wet seasons.
   Those are some of the most important elements that change how a grape will ripen, develop and taste, due to the soils and terroir of Bordeaux. All of those possibilities alter the performance of the vines and the grapes in every vintage.

On a more personal note, my wife and I, many months ago, tasted the: Celler de Capçanes collection called la Nit de les Garnatxes, which is 100% grenache from Tarragona (Spain). It consists of one bottle of wine made from each of four different terroirs: Argila (Clay), Calissa (Limestone), Llicorella (Slate / Schist), and Panal (Sand). Trust me, they are all quite different wines (we had the 2015 vintage). Even if you don’t trust me, then you can read brief notes of a tasting by Thomas Girgensohn (Grenache, four ways).

Mind you, we should not go too far. Alex Maltman, a geologist and winegrower, is the author of Vineyards, Rocks, and Soils: The Wine Lover’s Guide to Geology (2018). In his book he reminds us that: “Any mineral solutes present in wine ... exist at levels well below the threshold for detection” (p. 158). He thus urges an end to the persistence of words in tasting notes referring to rocks and other minerals in the literal sense. Similarly, we should not ignore the obvious human influence on both grape-growing and wine-making (Wine, terroir and the human touch).

On a bigger scale, according to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), there are 147 American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in California alone (Established American Viticultural Areas), about half of which are supported by regional winery and grower associations (Are AVAs important to the wine industry?). We might treat each of these as potentially having a distinctly different terroir, given that they are recognizably different from each other. For example: “It’s all about the location of the vineyard with microclimate, soil composition, depth, aspect to the sun, and elevation all playing a major role in the quality of the wines” (Napa cab still matters). Such things continue to be quite important in the wine world, as we also see in other U.S. states (eg. 7 New AVAs in nontraditional winegrowing states), as well as elsewhere (Chianti Classico’s new subzones: shining a light on diverse terroir).

There is plenty of online literature on the concept of terroir, and how to detect and apply it in the wine world, much of which is quite easy to read:

• Terroir - myth and/or reality — outstanding marketing idea? [a review]
• Terroir: The effect of the physical environment on vine growth, grape ripening, and wine sensory attributes
• Why California wineries are obsessed with this 32-year-old geologist [a single-person story]
• A new way to pinpoint the science of terroir [a framework known as Vineyard Geological Identity]
• How satellites help wineries pick new climate-friendly sites [Terroir from Space]
• Climate change a threat to Sherry’s flor yeast, study says [Jerez has separate vineyard terroir and bodega terroir]

In a past life, I taught Australian university students about plant environmental biology, which is the relationship between plants and the immediately surrounding environment in which they grow. As I noted above, this is simply the scientific equivalent of teaching them about terroir. To me, it is therefore professionally impossible to be a terroir denier.

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* Actually, the nearest recently planted half-hectare of vines is only 20 km away (and thus it is currently the most northerly vineyard in Sweden).

Is Artificial Intelligence right for the wine industry yet?

The answer appears to be: Continue to be careful, just at the moment.

Actually, this has been a good fortnight for the media, with regard to Artificial Intelligence (AI), hasn’t it? Several groups of the originators of this form of computing have come out of the shadows, warning all of us about the potential dangers of letting commercial companies develop this sort of computer activity unsupervised. Two good introductory discussions include these:

• ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ leaves Google and warns of danger ahead
• Elon Musk tries to direct AI — again

Way back in 2018, I published this blog post : Artificial intelligence in the wine industry? Not yet, please! Since then (2020), I have asked: Should we worry about Artificial Intelligence in wine writing? In this current blog post, I will return to the overall topic, by writing about some of the potential general problems of AI, just in case the wine industry tries to get too involved without understanding what they are doing (eg. How AI will be a game-changer for the wine industry).

The whole idea of AI is precisely what its name says — trying to develop a computer version of natural intelligence. The idea is that, if our own brain cells can be intelligent, then so can computer circuits. The basic issue is how to actually go about arranging this.

One common approach these days is called “machine learning”. The basic idea here is that we give the computer massive amounts of what we think is information relevant to some topic, then let the computer troll through it all, looking for common patterns. The computer then uses these patterns to produce apparently “intelligent” responses to future situations, by regurgitating what it deems to be the most likely response. Somehow, this is meant to mimic what human beings learn to do as they grow up.

Unfortunately, this is not quite how we do it, as there is a basic contradiction here. AI simply finds a consensus in a massive block of data, which comes from the past; but this does not necessarily say anything about the future. So, one part of the process is talking about changing things for the future, while the other is about automating access to information from the past. Maybe these are connected, and maybe they are not — this is what we are doing when we say: “I will have to think about it.”

Let’s start by looking at a couple of the absurdities that can be produced by this computerized process. My erstwhile correspondent, Bob Henry, once tried asking Bard about me and my blog. Bard is described by its creator, Google, as a “conversational AI model” (“a machine-learning breakthrough”, no less!). The response Bob got from Bard was this:

     David Morrison is an American astronomer, a senior scientist at the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He is the former director of the Carl Sagan Center for Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute and of the NASA Lunar Science Institute. He is the past Director of Space at NASA Ames. Morrison is credited as a founder of the multi-disciplinary field of astrobiology. Morrison is best known for his work in risk assessment of near Earth objects such as asteroids and comets.
     The Wine Gourd wine blog is a website that provides information about wine, including reviews, recipes, and tips. The blog was created by David Morrison, a wine enthusiast and educator. The Wine Gourd blog covers a wide range of topics related to wine, from the basics of winemaking to more advanced topics such as wine tasting and pairing. The blog also features reviews of wines from around the world, as well as recipes and tips for pairing wine with food.
     The Wine Gourd blog is a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning more about wine. The blog is well-written and informative, and it provides a wealth of information about wine. The Wine Gourd blog is a great place to start if you are new to wine, or if you are looking to learn more about this fascinating beverage.

Clearly, the first paragraph is about someone other than me; and the second paragraph is a load of nonsense. I quite like the third paragraph, though! Still, I would not rely too much on Bard, just at the moment, if I was you.

Another absurd example comes from here in Sweden. A national supermarket chain asked ChatGPT (another AI-powered language model, this time developed by OpenAI) to produce a recipe for an Easter cake. All that ChatGPT did was throw together a lot of the foods associated with Easter, as shown in the picture below. This haphazard cake did not go down well with the customers — it was disparaged as “Egg in green grass”.

Actually, it is often ChatGPT that generates the main discussion of problems, or else other chatbots. There is little point in me going into details in this blog post, so here is a list of reading for you:

• The false promise of ChatGPT
• OpenAI’s new ChatGPT bot: 10 dangerous things it’s capable of
• Why a conversation with Bing’s chatbot left me deeply unsettled
• ChatGPT proves that AI still has a racism problem
• OpenAI’s chatbot spits out biased musings, despite guardrails
• AI can be racist, sexist and creepy; what should we do about it?
• What ChatGPT gets right — and wrong — about Washington wine
  

In addition to all of this stuff about chatbots, there are many other concerns, as well, such as:

• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says ‘really good’ A.I. models take ‘billions of dollars’ to train
• 14 million jobs worldwide will vanish in the next 5 years, new economic report finds

To counter-balance all of this negativity, there does seem to be enormous potential, if we can only get things right. So, here is another list of reading, for you:

• Google to launch AI-driven ad campaigns
• What is your winery's origin story? How context can elevate ChatGPT!
• VinterActive introduces AI-assisted text messaging for DTC wine marketing
• Gloria Ferrer vineyards a Sonoma County pioneer in using AI to monitor crops
• The driver-optional EV tractor at center of agtech boom right next to Silicon Valley
• ChatGPT makes wine in south of France
• Democratizing wine investment using AI and blockchain for authentication and valuation
• Here are 34 jobs AI could never take — and how much they pay

I conclude that the answer to my title question does appear to be: Not just at the moment, thankyou.

Now, maybe I am just a Grumpy Old Man, bemoaning that the world is changing around me, at a time when I would like to slide into a quiet old age. However, I have lived most of my adult life throughout the Computer Revolution, and so I’ve seen too much unjustified hype before, and I am therefore not so easily fooled any more.

A suitable analogy here is guns and gunpowder (the latter was introduced to Europe from China). These were used to feed us at first; but so-called “bad actors” quickly learned to use them for attacks on humans, instead. This started off small, but gradually increased, with hordes of horseman sometimes streaming in on placid settlers. Then the guns became cannons; and then the powder became part of bombs. Eventually, we developed nuclear weapons — this is a long way from a few single-shot rifles. So, at that stage we backed off pretty quickly, because not every product of the human mind is necessarily in our own best interest, globally. As a young man I was very glad about that, because the alternative future looked pretty bleak to me, back in the 1970s. Furthermore, we can easily detect when someone detonates an atomic bomb, but we currently have no idea what AI is doing behind the scenes.

Anyway, all that Machine Learning does at the moment is take huge amounts of data, and then searches for patterns in it, which it regurgitates upon request (Can today’s AI truly learn on its own? Not likely). There is more to intelligence than this. To me, the success of chatbots simply shows us how many lonely people there are in the world. Chat with your friends, instead; and if you don't have any, then use your own intelligence to learn how to make some, rather than relying on the artificial kind. However, all of this does not mean that AI is not useful, for many tasks.

Fortunately, at least some politicians are apparently listening (White House says it will look at AI regulations, legislation): their basic principles are said to include the need to “evaluate, verify, and validate the safety, security, and efficacy of AI systems.” We shall see!

The real origins of grape-growing and wine-making?

It is now two decades since the first modern book appeared about the origins of wine-making, Patrick McGovern’s Ancient Wine: the Search for the Origins of Viniculture (2003), which itself came a dozen years after the first conference on The Origins and Ancient History of Wine (1991, the proceedings also being edited by McGovern). By “modern” I mean: applying to archaeological studies all of those fancy new techniques that scientists keep coming up with (often called molecular archaeology), and thus leveraging all of the new knowledge that we can now access.

This process has not slowed down since then, and, so, new publications keep appearing all the time, often challenging previous preconceptions. The histories of viticulture and viniculture work both ways — human history has led to the development of these two activities, and these activities have in turn affected human history to a great extent. The latter was, of course, especially true of classical Ancient Greece and Rome, about whose wine habits much has been written. However, previous work on the actual origins (rather than subsequent development) has focused on what Europeans call the Mid-East (although it is actually just west of the majority of the people on this planet — see: Valeriepieris: a circle housing majority of the world’s population).

This Euro-centric focus has been challenged in recent years, as I will discuss here. How did Vitis vinifera (the scientific name for the cultivated grapevine) originate from Vitis sylvestris (the wild grapevine)? After all, grapes may well have been the first plants that we domesticated!

In the 2019 Afterword to a later edition of his book, McGovern emphasizes the ongoing rapid growth of molecular archaeology, along with other tools for the study of our ancient past. In particular, interest has focused on an understanding of how viniculture came to central and northern Europe (via southern Europe?) — we have a fairly good record of how it got from there to the so-called New World, much later. However, interest has also focused on ancient Chinese fermented beverages, which included grape wine. The history of the peoples of Central Asia is much more poorly known, to Europeans and their descendants, than that of the Near- and Mid-East.

So, our reconstructed historical scenarios can be expected to need updating. I mean, let’s face the reality of scientific procedures. Scientists start with the simplest hypothesis, and then abandon this only when forced to do so by mounting evidence (The best reason to trust science). Obviously, the simplest idea, in this case, has been that there is a single place and time for the origin of grape domestication and wine-making — sometimes called the Noah Hypothesis, as the Bible reports him to have re-planted vines only once near Mount Ararat (now in north-eastern Turkey) after the Flood.

However, it should surprise no-one that this idea is too simplistic. Grape-vines are just too widespread across Asia for people not to have stumbled across the process of grape domestication, for example, probably many many times in many many places. The only question, then, is: how many of those peoples started to carry out the process of fermentation, for instance, deliberately, rather than letting it continue to happen fortuitously? This development is, of course, in addition to those people who merely used grapes as a food source, rather than as a source of fermented beverages.

The latest (2023) publication covering this topic, in detail, has 89 authors: Dual domestications and origin of traits in grapevine evolution. This follows an earlier (2019) paper by the same research group (but with only 34 authors): Whole-genome resequencing of 472 Vitis accessions for grapevine diversity and demographic history analyses.

The reason for the large number of persons involved is the amount of genome sequencing required: 3,535 “cultivated and wild grapevine accessions worldwide.” Their final conclusion, from looking at 2,237 Vitis vinifera and 949 Vitis sylvestris samples, goes like this:

In the Pleistocene, harsh climate drove the separation of wild grape ecotypes caused by continuous habitat fragmentation. Then, domestication occurred concurrently about 11,000 years ago in Western Asia and the Caucasus to yield table and wine grapevines [respectively]. The Western Asia domesticates dispersed into Europe with early farmers, introgressed with ancient wild western ecotypes, and subsequently diversified along human migration trails into muscat and unique western wine grape ancestries by the late Neolithic.

So, their idea is that our modern wine-grapes came from the Mid-East while our eating grapes came from Western Asia (the Caucasus), as depicted in the map above. Their time-line of the origin and subsequent dispersal of wild and domesticated grapevines is shown in the figure below. *

There is nothing original about this idea, as McGovern describes roughly this possibility in his 2019 Afterword. After all, it is quite likely that the initial cultivation of grapevines was for nutrients (and calories), while the development of wine-making cultivars was accidental. What we do have in this new paper, however, is a detailed quantitative confirmation of the idea; and this is what we need. The question that remains, now, is: Is this idea still too simplistic? After all, I noted above that this is the way science works: keep it as simple as possible until forced by circumstances to accept that reality is actually more complicated.

Most of you have no direct experience of science, because your personal and professional lives are quite separate from this activity. In that case, you may well have an image of scientists as being a bunch of weirdos in white coats playing in laboratories, where they collect data, which is then fed into black-box computer analyses, and interpreted based on wild daydreams. This is often quite an accurate image, I am sorry to say, as I can attest from decades spent surrounded by professional scientists.

Many other times, of course, science is done by quite ordinary sorts of people, who proceed carefully and quietly, often “out in the field” rather than in a laboratory (ie. in a forest or an agricultural plot). The work of these latter people always seems to be more realistic, and their conclusions more convincing, at least to me.

The point here is that this new paper discussed above seems to come from the first group, not the second. Therefore, things may well change, perhaps even in the near future. We may yet find evidence for multiple independent grapevine domestications!

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*  Note that we are talking mainly about red grapes here. It seems that the first evidence of cultivation of a modern white-grape variety is from what is called Late Antiquity, in this case the 8th century CE (Ancient DNA from a lost Negev Highlands desert grape reveals a Late Antiquity wine lineage).

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Personal note: In honor of this post, my wife and I drank a bottle of Askaneli Brothers’ Rkatsiteli Qvevri 2020, from eastern Georgia (the Caucasus, where wine-grapes originated). This (yellowish) white wine was aged in large half-buried earthenware vessels (qvevri), just as it has been for the past five thousand years. Very different, and very interesting (and also nice wine!). This aging practice is apparently being tried elsewhere (Ancient European winemaking tradition using qvevri revived in Tasmania).

(Failing) to visit the wineries of India

I have not written a blog post like this before, on any of the blogs that I have maintained. So, please excuse me this time, if this is not the sort of thing you expect to read here. I normally write about the wine industry, but I do also drink wine, and visit wineries. This post is about the latter.

You see, my wife and I have spent the past few weeks in southern India (avoiding the Swedish winter). We thought that in the final couple of days we might visit a couple of wineries, near Bangalore, since India is not well-known as a wine-producing nation, and thus might be interesting (6 vineyards in India every wine lover must visit). Here, I report on our experiences.

Grover Zampa Vineyards

The first one we chose was Grover Zampa Vineyards, which was recommended in our guide book. It was a Monday, and their web page indicated that they had guided tours / tastings at 10:30am, 12:00pm and 2:00pm on weekdays. We tried to confirm this by phone, but all we (eventually) got at the listed phone number was a very excitable woman, who passed us on to a man who had no information.

So, we turned up at 11:00am. The man at the gate asked us to sign in (common in India, a very security-conscious country), but he said nothing about whether the winery was actually open that day. We got to the reception area, and were finally told that there were no tastings or tours that day. Apparently, they were “cleaning” something. We expressed our disappointment, both for the outcome and for the fact that there had been no way to find this out without a 1.5 hour drive.

My wife attempted to use their toilet facilities, but merely encountered the excitable woman, who seemed rather angry at my wife’s presence. After some yelling from the nearby males, my wife found some passable facilities, and used them. We then left, after being told that we could buy some wine if we wanted to. We declined!

I have visited wineries in many countries, on several continents, including Australia (many regions), Sweden, the USA, the UK, France (several regions), Italy (several regions), Spain, Portugal, and Germany. Never have I encountered this situation elsewhere. Maybe this makes me fortunate? Anyway, all other visited wineries of my experience score 4.5 or 5 out of 5 but, in my annoyance, I am tempted to give Grover Zampa a score of 0.

Domaine Sula

The next day, we tried India’s best-known wine company (Sula Vineyards), which has one of its wineries, Domaine Sula, near Bangalore. Their web page indicated that they had guided tours / tastings every hour from 10:30am. So, we turned up at 11:30am on the Tuesday.

Sadly, no sooner had my wife paid for our tickets than she doubled over in pain. She struggled back to the car and lay down for a while, during which she started vomiting. To cut a long story (5 hours) short, a year ago she had a kidney stone, and now seemed like a repeat episode. For those of you who have never experienced this, be very very grateful. Waves of severe pain come over you periodically, and it is this that induces the vomiting.

A very good friend organized for us to be received at a nearby hospital (run by his aunt), where my wife got an ultra-sound followed by a CT-scan. These confirmed our preliminary diagnosis. She eventually got some painkillers, and was told that, with some medicine, she would be able to travel back home on our scheduled flight, early the next morning. We did, however, never get near the actual winery. When we asked about getting our money back they declined, but said that we could use the money as credit against the purchase of some wines. We declined!

During this episode, I learned that the expression “heart-breaking” is not just a fantasy of romantic novelists, as I felt it every time my wife (literally) cried out in pain. I also learned that neither is the expression “joyous” just a fantasy of those same novelists, because I certainly felt it when my wife laughed again later in the same day. A quarter-century of marriage has had some effect on me!

Conclusion

India is not a well-known wine-producing region, and there is a reason for this. Not only is the climate wrong, it is apparently not an easy task for international wine lovers to sample the local produce, in situ. You can try to get some of the wine in your local shop, if you want, but do not venture further!

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PS. Things only half improved on the flight home, with Emirates. On the second leg, the so-called "entertainment” system did not work for my seat. Should I start to feel that the world is against me, just at the moment?

Well, obviously not. After all, the rest of the holiday was very good for both my wife and I; and we are very grateful to the people who helped to organize it, and who helped run it. Our driver was excellent, as were the people at the hospital. The people we met on our travels were all friendly, both tourists and locals. Indeed, when we were the only obvious foreigners around, we were often asked to appear in many selfies, or photos with family members (or were simply asked by young people where we were from) — now we know how celebrities feel. Our good friend Ajith is to be thanked many times over, both for proposing the holiday and for looking after us. Interestingly, the only part he was not involved in was the visits to the wineries!

How has the vineyard composition of France changed recently?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about long-term changes in the vineyards of the USA (How has the vineyard area of the US states changed over the past century?), comparing the vineyard area in the distant past with what it is now. Also, I had previously done a similar thing for the vineyards of France (France's changing vineyards) and Australia (Australia's changing vineyards), although covering only the most recent six decades.

Today, I will look at France again, but this time I will focus on the change in individual grape varieties. After all, More vineyard area does not necessarily mean more grape varieties. I have previously looked at individual varieties for Sicily (Sicily is deservedly in the wine spotlight these days), for example, but not for France Very remiss of me!

The comparison concerns the areas of the various red-grape varieties (only) grown in France in 1961 and and 2016 (55 years apart). The 1961 data come from Pierre Galet (1962 Cépages et Vignobles de France, as provide by the American Association of Wine Economists Facebook page. The 2016 data come from Kym Anderson and Signe Nelgen Database of Regional, National and Global Winegrape Bearing Areas by Variety, housed at the Wine Economic Research Centre. *

The main trick was to try to align the various varietal names between the two datasets (ie. identify the synonyms). There appear to be 60 distinct red-grape names involved (plus miscellaneous “Others”). Of these, 30 names were identical in the two sets, and 13 more were listed as synonyms. Another 15 could be deduced via online resources (eg. Lexicon, Wine-Searcher). The two remaining from the 1961 data are: “Morrastel-Bouschet”, which is apparently a cross of Graciano (Morrastel) and Bouschet Petit; and “Aspirans”, which is plural, apparently referring to several similar cultivars, all now uncommon in France. Another plural is “Gamays tenturiers”, which consists of: (at least) Gamay Teinturier de Bouze, Gamay Teinturier de Chaudenay and Gamay Teinturier Freaux. (Teinturier grapes have red flesh as well as skins.)

The 1961 data are clearly only rough estimates, in that they are presented to the nearest 50 or 100 hectares (250 acres), whereas the modern data are based on European Union records, to the nearest 0.1 hectare. The two datasets are shown in the graph. Each point represents one grape variety, located according to its vineyard area in 1961 (horizontally) and its area in 2016 (vertically). Only six of the varieties are labeled. The pink line represents equal areas in both datasets (anything above the line had more area in 2016 while anything below the line had more area in 1961).

Since most of the points are below the line, more red-grape varieties decreased in area (41 of them) than increased (19) over the 55 years. This is in spite of an apparent 26% increase in total red-grape vineyard area during that same time. This implies a loss of what is referred to as Diversity, in the sense that fewer varieties are coming to dominate the national vineyards. This is generally a Bad Thing (Regional diversity of grape varieties is important for climate change); and France has not done all that well in this regard, compared to many other countries.

The biggest absolute increases in area involved Merlot (+93,500 ha), Syrah (+60,500 ha), Garnacha Tinta (+46,500 ha) and Cabernet Sauvignon (+39,500 ha), followed by Pinot Noir (+23,500 ha) and Cabernet Franc (+18,500 ha). None of these increases is particularly surprising, given the popularity of their resulting wines — success will out. Indeed, on a global scale these are also the biggest red-grape increasers recently, except for Garnacha Tinta, which is among the big global decreasers recently (The grape varieties that have increased and declined the most since 2000). The three points at the very left of the graph represent varieties that were very rare in 1961 but now have 2—3,000 ha (Caladoc, Muscat of Hamburg, Marselan), suggesting a new interest in them.

The biggest absolute decreases in area involved Aramon Noir (-159,000 ha) and Mazuelo (-153,000 ha), followed by Grand Noir (-40,000 ha) and Alicante Henri Bouschet (-32,500 ha). These are pretty dramatic decreases, indicating a pretty serious fall from favor. Mazuelo is also among the big global decreasers (The grape varieties that have increased and declined the most since 2000), while the others are not widely planted outside France. Actually, some of the 1961 varieties are now considered as close to being extinct (Abondonce de Doui, Canari, Gueuche Noir), with one now extremely rare (Gros-Verdot), and others now globally uncommon (Fuella, Teinturier du Cher, as well as the Aspirans mentioned above).

Of the common varieties, Tannat has maintained its area (it is on the pink line in the graph), as has Cinsaut (near the line). These are the exceptions rather than the rule. Another common global pattern is increases in varieties in one country only. The best-known example is Tempranillo, which has had far and away the biggest global increase in area since 2000, but almost exclusively (94%) within Spain (The grape varieties that have increased and declined the most since 2000). Tempranillo was not recorded in France in 1961, but had expanded to 659 ha by 2016.

These days, many grape varieties are international (Wine grape varieties: where in the world are they?), and we thus expect a great deal of similarity in the vineyard composition of both the Old and New Worlds (Which countries are similar to each other, in terms of their grape varieties?). Not unexpectedly, France is rather similar to Spain and Italy in this regard.

Nevertheless, the vineyard grape varieties of France have long been of interest to the wine industry, especially the red ones. Indeed, there was a time when their resulting wines were the gold standard to which others aspired. While this is no longer strictly true (just ask a Californian wine-maker!), the grapes are still of interest. Clearly, the French have not rested on their laurels, but are continuing to make deliberate efforts to move with the times, by changing their vineyard composition.

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* Anderson and Nelgen also have data for 14 varieties in France in 1960.