How well do you know the common European wine-making regions?

There has been much talk over the years of an over-supply of wine in Europe, which has recently been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, it is perhaps less well-known that the European Union has been steadily reducing its vineyard area since 2007.

The EU currently consists of 28 countries (including the exiting one), although at various times, several other states have shown an interest in joining, some of which have since withdrawn their expression of interest, and some of which have never done so (although they have no current intention of proceeding).

The European Commission has a Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, which likes to keep tabs on what is going on within the member states; and it presents this information on its web pages. Of interest to this blog is the data listed for Areas under vine, which currently lists the vineyard areas for each year from 2001 to 2018, inclusive.

Those countries with officially recognized commercial wine-making industries are indicated on this map (the gray countries are not in the Union). The grape-growing climate is indicated by letters and colors, from coolest (A) to warmest (CIIIb) (described in Wikipedia). Note: you will need to click on each image in this post, to be able to read the labels.

The EU is estimated to have about 43% of the world’s vineyard area. The EU area reached its maximum back in 2007, at 3,645,043 hectares; and, since then, the area has slowly decreased by 11.8%. Most of the component countries have decreased their vineyards, but some much more than others, as shown in the first graph.

Notable declines have occurred in those countries with the biggest area (and therefore the greatest wine production): Spain (13.1%), France (7.8%), Italy (10.5%) and Portugal (20.2%). However, the biggest relative declines have occurred in Bulgaria (54.9%), Slovakia (27.1%) and Hungary (23.3%), in an attempt to rationalize their industries.

The data for the regions of Spain, which has the biggest area, are shown in the next graph. It emphasizes that the massive central plateau known as Castilla - La Mancha is where the majority of Spanish bulk wine originates. It had 458,304 ha of vines in 2018, which is 48% of Spain’s total vineyard area. However, this is of no great interest to drinkers even of bulk wine, since they mostly do not care where their wine comes from.

So, let’s delete this region from the graph, as shown next, so that we can see the rest of the regions properly. Note that most of these regions have had significant reductions in their vineyard area this century. Indeed, only La Rioja has shown any notable increase in area, having increased almost every year since 2001 — it is now 12.3% larger than it was back then. This region is, of course, home to Spain’s most popular bottled red wines. It has a reputation for consistency, due at least partly to its practice of blending grapes from across the region, and its interest in long ageing before release, often in old wood.

We can now move on to France, which may have the best-known wine regions in Europe, as listed in the next graph. There are 8 regions that comprise the bulk of the vineyard area, all bar one of which have shown declines in area. The main exception is the Charente region, which has increased 9.4% since 2001 — the neighboring Charente Maritime has also increased by 4.6%. These regions are better known as the origin of the specialist brandy called Cognac, rather than for their table wines.

The Gironde region has the largest collection of vineyards in France, and includes a very large number of wine appellations along all of the tributaries of the Gironde River, often labeled generically as Bordeaux wine (although this name actually refers to the main city). To see the smaller vineyard regions, we can re-plot the graph by including only those regions with <25,000 ha, as shown next. Even here, there are many more regions with decreasing area than increasing. The main exception is the Aube, which has increased by 36.7% — its grapes mostly go to make Champagne.

We can now move on to Italy, where things are perhaps not all that different, as you can see in the next graph. There are a number of regions that have undergone major losses of vineyared area, notably Sicily (29.1%), Puglia (20.4%) and Lazio (59.5%). Two of these regions have historically been the largest producers of bulk wine: Sicily and Puglia, both in the very south of the country.

The main increase in vineyard area has been in Veneto, which has grown consistently since 2008 (29.8%). This is almost entirely due to the boom in Prosecco wine, as an affordable alternative to the prohibitive prices of other sparkling wines. If things continue as they are, Veneto will now be the biggest vineyard area in Italy, surpassing Sicily as well as Puglia. However, there is some evidence that the appeal of Prosecco is waning internationally.

Finally, we can have a look at Portugal. Here, the vineyard regions are designed to confuse the non-expert, because a number of them have been re-named and others sub-divided in the past decade. The following graph therefore looks a bit of a mess.

In order to make sense of it, you need to know about the following changes through time:

Trás-os-Montes  →  Trás-os-Montes + Douro
Beiras  →  Beiras + Terras da Beira + Terras de Cister + Terras do Dão
Estremadura  →  Lisboa
Ribatejo  →  Tejo
Terras do Sado  →  Península de Setúbal

Also, the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Açores were added only from 2008.

Once you’ve got that, you will note that the only region to show a consistent increase in vineyard area is the Alentejo. This has traditionally been simply “the huge non-descript area across the Tejo River (from Lisbon)”, but it has recently come into its own as a source of red wines made from old dry-grown vines. It is also, incidentally, quite a nice tourist destination, if you happen to like megalithic standing stones, or walled hill-top towns, or monasteries, or (especially) mamma’s home cooking when you visit a restaurant. It is also, incidentally, a major source of cork-bark for bottled wine.