Tucson CitizenTucson Citizen

Italy becomes world’s biggest wine producer

MILAN, Italy – A bumper harvest is expected to push Italian wine production above that of neighboring France for the first time in a decade, making Italy the world’s largest wine producer.

The Coldiretti farmers lobby estimates the production of Italian wine is up 8 percent over 2007 to 4.7 billion liters, compared with 4.44 billion liters in neighboring France, where production fell 5 percent.

Italy last surpassed France’s production in 1998, and has since been reducing the area of land cultivated as vineyards in favor of improving quality, Coldiretti’s wine expert Domenico Bosco said Wednesday.

Italy’s strong harvest is largely due to good weather, Bosco said, which helped Sicily, in particular, recover from lower 2007 yields caused by a deadly fungus there.

While production is up, Coldiretti said the quality of Italian wines is also improving, with 60 percent earning the right to bear labels specifying marks of quality such as geographic origin or adherence to regional winemaking rules and traditions.

Production estimates by Assoenologi, an association of Italian wine producers, are slightly lower at 44.5 billion liters, or an increase of 5 percent.

According to Assoenologi, that gives Italy a 17 percent share of the world wine market and one-third of the European market.

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

Search site | Terms of service