Sep 15, 2023 at 9:46 PM Update: 8 hours ago
Wine growers in Italy are preparing for a bad harvest season. Fungi that attack the vines were given free rein thanks to successive periods of heavy rain and drought. This causes problems with the harvest, especially in southern Italy.
The harvest of wine grapes this year is expected to amount to just under 44 million hectoliters of wine, trade organizations UIV and Assoenologi calculated with the agricultural institute Ismea. That is a decrease of 12 percent compared to last year and the worst score in the past six years.
“This year the leading role was played by peronospora, a fungal disease that, thanks to the numerous rain showers, did not show any mercy to many vines, mainly in the center and south of Italy.” The three organizations write this in their estimates for the harvest season. The peronospora causes downy mildew, which can destroy both crops and vines.
The fungi thrive especially well in moist and warm conditions. It is striking that the northern regions in Italy, which generally suffer more from wet weather conditions, managed to maintain their harvest at a reasonable level. The hardest hit regions were the Abruzzo, known for the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, and Molise. There, the yield of the vineyards will probably drop by 40 and 45 percent respectively.
Paolo Niro, a small-scale winegrower from San Paolo di Civitate in the southeastern region of Apulia (Puglia), told Reuters that his entire harvest has been destroyed by the fungus. “Already at the beginning of May we realized that there would be no harvest. We work organically and noticed the attack of fungi earlier,” he explained.
Climate change poses a risk to wine growers
The UN Agriculture Organization warned that climate change will cause more frequent extreme weather. This also entails risks for winegrowers, who should take precautions.
Due to the sharply shrinking harvest, Italy has probably lost the position of the largest wine producer in the world to France. But according to Ismea boss Livio Proietti, there will be no shortage of Italian wine, because many unsold stocks have been created in the past year. “The problem is not so much that we produce less wine, but the weakening demand at home and abroad for table wines in particular.”
2023-09-15 19:46:33
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