Global Wine Production Expected to Fall to 4-Year Low

Global wine production looks set to fall 5% in 2016, ranking at the lowest level of output in four years.

The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), a trade group that examines scientific and technical findings on wines around the world, published its estimates on Thursday. The organization predicted that the global output of wine would fall to 259 millions of hectolitres (mhl), a significant decrease compared to 2015.

OIV’s findings noted that “climatic events” affected production across South American countries with estimated output levels decreasing sharply in Argentina and Chile, and even by 50% in the case of Brazil. Leading European producers Italy and France are predicted to have experienced slight drops in their production levels of 2% and 12% respectively compared with 2015 levels, although Italy still remains the world’s top wine producer with an estimated output of 48.8mhl in 2016.

Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. are all expected to report an increase in production output, while a decrease of 19% is predicted for South Africa. The forecast for 2016’s production levels ranks among the three poorest years of production since 2000, according to OIV’s early estimates.