Bad weather in Europe’s top wine-making countries means 2021 will be an extremely low year for wine production, the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) said on Thursday.

The Paris-based industry body said that world wine production volume is expected to come in at around 250 million hectalitres, a drop of four percent from last year and seven percent below the 20-year average.

“The 2021 wine production can be considered extremely low, only slightly above the historically small production of 2017,” said the OIV.

“This is the result of unfavourable climatic conditions that severely impacted the major wine-producing countries in Europe this year,” it added.

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Italy, Spain, and France are Europe’s leading wine producers and account for 45 percent of the total. They saw their output plummet 22 million hectalitres thanks to spring frosts, hail storms, and deluges of rain.

France’s production level was knocked back all the way to 1957.

If wine growers adapted relatively well to the Covid-19 crisis last year, they are now “confronting a much greater problem than the pandemic: climate change,” OIV director Pau Roca said.

He said adverse weather events were occurring more and more frequently. 

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While “there is no vaccine” against climate change, Roca said “there are long-term solutions which will require major efforts in terms of sustainable practices for cultivating vines and producing wine”.

He said adaption is an “urgent necessity” for the industry.

The impact of the low production level this year, the third in a row, is still unclear due to the volatility caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the OIV said. 

If consumption fell last year by three percent due to the impact of Covid-related restrictions, it is expected to rebound by two percent this year, and could return to pre-pandemic levels except in China.