Spain's wine surplus overflows across globe following year of unusual weather

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/spain-wine-industry-surplus-world-rankings-weather

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A soggy spring and sunny summer made Spain the world's top wine producer in 2013, according to figures from the country's agriculture ministry.

Official ranking from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine will not be released until May, but the Spanish ministry said that wine production surged 41% last year, with vineyards producing 50m hectolitres – enough to fill 6.7bn bottles of wine. Spain beat competitors France and Italy, who reported harvest of 42m and 47m hectolitres respectively.

Ángel Ortega, who represents wine-growers from La Mancha denomination, attributed the bumper year to unusual weather conditions: "It's not often that you see all the right climate conditions come together like that."

More than half of last year's harvest came from Castilla-La Mancha, the region that houses La Mancha among other denominations of wine.

Others in Spain's wine industry, such as Pau Roca of the Spanish Wine Federation, said it was just a matter of time before Spain surpassed its competitors. "It has the largest planted surface of vineyards in the world. The potential was always there," he said.

For years, inefficiencies in production saw Spain lag behind France and Italy. Recent investments in planting and irrigation systems as well as a renewed focus on productivity simply combined with a year of great weather, said Roca.

The Madrid government welcomed the news, as it highlighted another industry on which the country can lean on to bolster its fragile economic recovery.

Winemakers were a bit more reluctant. The enormous quantity of wine yielded – about 15m hectolitres more than last year – has left many worried about how they will be able to sell it all, said Ortega: "There's a good side and bad side. To have more production means it's always a bit more difficult to sell. The good part is that our competitors didn't have an especially good year."

Although well-known in Spain, wines from La Mancha have not achieved the same recognition as the country's better-known wines such as Rioja and Cava, said Ortega. His team is working on promoting their wines abroad, particularly focusing on China and the US . "It's difficult. The international market for wines is very competitive," he said.

Part of the challenge facing Spanish winemakers is that domestic demand has been sinking in recent years, said Rafael del Rey of the Spanish Wine Market Observatory. "We are especially worried about young people," he said. "They drink very little wine."

Eight years ago, Spaniards consumed more wine than they exported, but in the past two years, he said, the country has been exporting more than double the amount of wine it consumes: "We would like to make wine fashionable in Spain, like it is in the UK and the United States."

Del Rey's explained how young women in the UK and the United States were behind a growing market in white and sparking wines.

As Spain's wine industry increasingly leans on the international market for growth, the focus is on getting more value out of wines. "It's not just a matter of having a lot of very good wine, which we have, but also being able to commercialise that wine in a much better way," said del Rey. Doing so, he cautioned, was a slow, arduous process, involving years of trade fairs, marketing and branding. "It's not something you can do in one or two years."