Top Wine-Producing Nation Is About to Be Dethroned

After a growing season disrupted by intense storms and blistering summer heat, the world's top wine-producing nation is about to be dethroned. Experts from the European Commission, French Ministry of Agriculture, and Italy's Institute of Services for the Agricultural and Food Market predict Italy will produce 12% less wine volume in 2023 than in 2022 due to a variety of factors, including several linked to climate change, Bloomberg reports. The country's expected 43 million hectoliters of wine, down from 50 million hectoliters last year, won't be enough to top France's predicted 46 million hectoliters, meaning Italy's neighbor, which gave up its crown as the world's leading wine-producing nation in 2014, will now take it back, per Reuters and Euronews.

Italy was hit hard by drought and intense heat, as well as heavy downpours this year, which allowed a fungus to flourish. Plasmopara viticola, which causes a disease called grape downy mildew, "thrives in warm, humid conditions, which were common in Italy this year due to unusual heat and heavy downpours during the key month of May, when the grapes are forming," Reuters reports. The regions worst hit were along Italy's Adriatic coast, with Molise losing 45% of its output and Abruzzo losing 40%. Producers in France, including 90% of those in Bordeaux, were also affected by mildew. However, nationwide production is expected to be on par with 2022, thanks to fine weather in other French regions.

Excessive rain didn't just spawn mildew. In Italy's Emilia-Romagna region, entire vineyards "were swept away in May when storms dumped seven months' worth of rain in 72 hours," per Bloomberg. In Spain, intense heat took such a toll on early ripening grapes "that the country's production is predicted to fall more than 20%," the outlet adds. California fared much better following winter rains and the coolest summer in more than a decade. As winemaker Matt Crafton of Napa's Chateau Montelena tells Bloomberg, "When I think about the wines that made Montelena and the Napa Valley great, they were created in vintages like 2023, with a slow, steady development of flavor, texture, and character. It doesn't get much better than this." (More wine stories.)