Greek Wine Production: Slight Uptick Amidst Long-Term Decline

A postulation of Samos wines. Credit: Greek Reporter

This year’s Greek vino accumulation shows a flimsy summation of 6.01%, according to information submitted by the Department of Vine, Wine, and Alcoholic Beverages to the European Commission.

This humble emergence follows a historic 35.27% driblet recorded successful the 2023-2024 accumulation period.

Greek vino accumulation breakdown

Non-Geographical Indication (GI) Wines: Production of wines without a Geographical Indication is notably acceptable to summation by 10.66%. These wines presently represent the bulk of full accumulation astatine 51.45%.

GI Wines: Wines with Geographical Indication (PDO and PGI) relationship for 35.29% of the full volume.

Long-Term Decline: Historical information dating backmost to 1990 amusement a continuous simplification successful Greece’s full wine production. This improvement is attributed not lone to the clime situation but besides to the abandonment of vineyards.

Underreported Abandonment: According to the Central Cooperative Union of Greek Wine Products (KEOSOE), the officially reported abandoned vineyard country is underestimated, arsenic galore grape growers person switched to different crops without declaring the changes successful the Viticultural Register.

Increased Imports: The debased measurement of home accumulation has led to a emergence successful vino imports, chiefly low-priced wines from Italy, which negatively impacts the competitiveness and sustainability of the Greek vino sector.

The tiny standard of Greek viticulture

Stelios Boutaris, the precocious elected president of the Greek Wine Association, provided a stark appraisal of the sector’s size, contempt its caller strides successful quality:

“We springiness the content of being ‘big,’ which is tenable considering the important improvement steps that person been taken. However, if we look astatine the numbers and data, the information is that the Greek vineyard is tiny (around 610 quadrate kilometers, with a downward trend) and the size of its concern is correspondingly small.”

The full Greek vineyard is astir one-fifth the size of Bordeaux unsocial (just 1 portion of France).

The full turnover of Greek vino (domestic and international) is estimated to beryllium little than €400 million, which is smaller than the turnover of a azygous large home company, the Athenian Brewery.

In summation to the contented of scale, the assemblage faces respective structural and outer challenges, including the information that the mean vineyard size is 4,000 quadrate meters. The mean property of winegrowers is 58, with constricted younker renewal.

Boutaris said that the analyzable and outdated vino authorities hinders modernization. In addition, helium pointed retired that dissimilar countries similar Austria and Portugal, the Greek assemblage lacks beardown self-financing mechanisms and is highly babelike connected European co-funding for promotion abroad.

He besides noted that caller vino regions are emerging, specified arsenic Georgia, and adjacent Great Britain, which present produces high-quality sparkling wines owed to clime change.

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