World wine production “worth” 113% of consumption, in Italy 204%

There is more wine on our planet than is needed to meet consumption. One of the issues closest to the heart of the wine world concerns precisely consumption, which, in turn, has repercussions on stocks in the cellar, and, therefore, on the costs that a winery has to bear. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find the “breakeven” between an increasingly “over” production - and on which factors such as the change in consumption and, if you will, even the demographic decline - and the demand from the market also affect. But this is especially true for countries with solid and important production while, at the same time, there are others with production that is not enough to cover domestic needs. As reported in a table by the American Association of Wine Economists (Aawe), which cites the “Annual Database of Global Wine Markets, 1835 to 2022” as its source, world wine production accounts for 113% of its consumption.
But, in each country, the situation is very different, and while there are those who are forced to import to meet their consumption, there are also those who are more than independent (and, therefore, forced to export) from the standpoint of “wine sovereignty”, so to speak. Starting with Chile, a major wine producer, which leads this special ranking with 629%, and, thus, with a strong disparity between wine availability and consumption. In second place is Moldova, the state with the most hectares of vineyard per capita, which comes in at 443%; Spain completes the podium with 374%. Italy is in sixth place (204%), preceded by South Africa (262%) and New Zealand (320%), while France also exceeds its “self-sufficiency” with 178%. If, on the other hand, the ranking is flipped, the figure for the United Kingdom, not surprisingly one of the main importers of wine on the globe, stands out, as it can count on production covering only 1% of domestic consumption.
A “shortage” that encompasses so many important countries for the wine market, starting with the United States (72%), the main partner for oenological Italy, but also China (52%), Russia (46%), Germany (45%), Switzerland (33%), Canada (16%), Japan (8%), Belgium-Luxembourg (6%). And where production is distant from the numbers returned by consumption, there is, therefore, room for exports by those countries with a significant amount of product, which can thus lighten their cellar stocks.