The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) has released its global economic vitiviniculture data, which details global wine production levels.
Overall the OIV said there was a very high world wine production in 2018, which was estimated at 282 million hectolitres (mhl), which follows a historically low harvest in 2017 and it is also one of the highest since 2000.
According to the OIV Australian wine production was 12.5mhl, which is a decline compared with that of the previous year, while New Zealand production, at 3.0mhl remained at a very high level.
In a statement the OIV said: “In Australia, after the two very sizeable harvests of 2016 (13.1mhl) and 2017 (13.7mhl), 2018 production (12.5mhl) saw a drop of nine per cent.
“Despite this drop, the vinified level remained high in relation to the five-year average.
“In New Zealand, production increased compared with the preceding year and stood at a high level of 3.0mhl, which is the third highest production recorded in the country.”
The slight decline for Australia also contrasted with a significant increase in production for Chile, which was up 36 per cent compared with 2017, to 12.9mhl. That moved Australia down to eighth in the list of wine producing countries, with Chile leapfrogging into seventh.
Italy remained the number wine producing countries, with 48.5mhl forecast for 2018, second is France at 46.4mhl, with Spain in third at 40.9mhl. The top 10 is completed with the United States in fourth, Argentina in fifth, China in sixth, Germany in ninth and South Africa in tenth.
In the European Union, the harvest volume will be 19 per cent higher than the previous year’s levels. Wine production, excluding juice and musts, is estimated at 168.4mhl – which is a significant increase of 27.2mhl compared with the low 2017 production (141.1mhl).