Italian grape harvest 2023: 50.4 million quintals of grapes for 38 million hectoliters of wine

50.4 million quintals of wine grapes compared to 67.2 in 2022, 25.1% less looking at the national average, but with several regions seeing harvest losses of well over 30 %, reaching in some cases, losses of 2/3 on last year’s production. This is the official balance of the 2023 harvest campaign in the Ministry of Agriculture’s numbers, which WineNews is able to anticipate. And that tells the impact of climate change and blight in the first place. Veneto, with 13.6 million quintals of grapes, remains by far the leading region, despite -9.2%, ahead of Puglia, with 8.7 million quintals of grapes, at -38.7%, and Emilia Romagna, which contains the decline in -3.1%, at 7.9 million quintals of wine grapes harvested. At 3.6 million quintals of grapes, Sicily follows, accounting for a 37.6% drop, ahead of Piedmont, at 2.9 (-11.4%), Friuli Venezia Giulia, at 2.7 (-27.5%), and Tuscany, at 2.4 (-25.8%). The most pronounced declines, in percentage terms, are recorded, however, in Molise, at -74.6% (to 140,305 quintals of wine grapes), and, among the most important regions in terms of production volumes, in Abruzzo, at 1.7 million quintals of wine grapes harvested, for a loss of -63.5%, but also doing very badly are Basilicata (-62.5%, to just 64. 842 quintals of wine grapes harvested), Campania, at -57.6% (371,809), Lazio at -41.6% (581,778), Marche at -42.8% (646,364 quintals), and Umbria, at -31.5% (370,845 quintals). The result, in wine, should, therefore, result in a total of 38.1 million hectoliters between wine and must out of the 49.8 in 2022, a -23% drop, to which 159,309 liters of grape juice should be added, according to production declarations.