Mar 28: The world production was down around 6 percent in 2012 at a 37 year-low of 251 million hLs, with EU production falling more steeply by 10 percent to 141 million hLs. France suffered a sharper drop of nearly 17 percent after a good harvest in 2011, according to figures released by OIV at a press conference in Paris on Thursday by its Director General, Federico Castellucci
 "We had a difficult 2012, mainly because of a sharp drop in production, but trade flows mostly held stable," said Castellucci to reporters, referring to total wine exports which were stable at 101 million hLs after a long-term upward trend. Given the low harvests and economic crisis, the world wine business was broadly positive 2012, he added.
The EU policy of digging up vines to end years of surpluses had led to a reduction of 269,000 hectares of surface area between 2008 and 2011, well above the targeted 175,000 hectares, contributing to a recent rise in prices, Castellucci said, adding that rising consumption also helped push prices up.
The wine market, however, continues to suffer the impact of the decline in production, especially in Europe. In 2012, the area of the vineyards in European countries has steadily decreased to 4212 million hAs, a drop of 0.8% between 2011 and 2012. This decrease is however less important than that of the previous fiscal year due at the end of the European reduction of vineyards. Outside Europe the vineyard surface recorded a slight increase to 3363 million hAs (+ 0.3%).
French exports rose 6 percent to 15 million hLs, but Italy and Spain- world's two largest wine exporters by volume, saw their exports fall 7 and 13 percent respectively to 21.5 and 19.1 million hLs. Both these countries also suffered a bad vintage but not as bad as France, he pointed out. The fall in production resulted in the prices for French bulk red wines gaining 7 percent between August and February, while bulk white wines rose 30 percent.
Chile, the largest South American producer on the other hand had a record production in 2012, also recorded a 13-percent growth in exports to 7.5 million hLs while South African exports were up 17 percent to 4.2 million hLs, with sales to UK jumping 50 percent.
The export share of the top five European producers -- Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Portugal in the world fell from 65.4 % to 62.3 %. This benefited South America as well as the US where 7 % growth was noticed, according to the OIV report. Global wine consumption increased 0.6 percent last year to 245 million hLs, mainly helped by China and the US.
Chinese consumption rose 9 percent to reach 17.8 million hLs, leading to a total rise in consumption of 27 percent since 2008. The local output supplied the bulk of the additional demand. Imports only accounted to 0.3 million hLs of the 1.5 million hLs rise recorded in 2012."There is a slightly new configuration here. The Chinese have started either to make the wine themselves or to import wine from countries where they have companies -- it's still a small number but not minimal anymore," Castellucci added.
In conclusion, Federico Castellucci said that Argentina, which will host the World Congress of vine and wine in 2014, gave a President to the OIV (the current President Claudia Quini is an Argentinean lady) and a Pope (the new Pope Francis) in the Catholic Church. , He welcomed that wine global trends "like good wine become better with the years' taking the quote Pope François made at its first hearing in Rome.
Following are the Details of the Presentation at the Conference –but in French(English version has not been released yet and will be uploaded on Release).
Press Note Detailed Note
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