Tracking the Elusive Wine Statistics
Is The Truth Out There?
By Mick Winter
Staff Writer
Is there really a “tsunami vinifera” lurking offshore, moving inexorably forward to swamp the shores of the United States, driving shelf prices down, delighting consumers and bankrupting hapless American vintners and growers? Is there a fifth column of excess domestic acreage waiting to strike from within?
The statistics say yes. On the other hand, the statistics say no.
It depends which statistics you’re looking at and how you interpret them. Some observers say the facts of world winegrape oversupply are obvious, but that the industry is in a total state of denial. Others say there is simply the normal ebb and flow of cyclical supply and demand. Still others believe there is merely a problem of “undermarketing.”
Can we know the truth? Where would we find statistics that explain the reality of the world wine supply?
Look to France?
One place the truth ought to be found is at the Office International de la Vigne et du Vin (OIV), the only truly worldwide wine organization, headquartered in Paris.
The OIV produces the best overall statistics on the worldwide wine situation. Unfortunately they are currently two years old, and their accuracy varies, depending on the thoroughness of the country that reported them. One thing that is missing is solid varietal information. Since many countries do not track varietals, currently neither does OIV.
OIV’s figures are used by such organizations as California’s Wine Institute, which translates them into American-style measurements, and makes them available at its excellent web site at www.wineinstitute.org/communications/statistics.
Maybe It’s in California
Headquartered in San Francisco, Wine Institute focuses on California statistics. Its primary sources of information are the California Department of Agriculture and the California Agricultural Statistical Service (CASS), which gather their data from agricultural commissioners in each of the state’s 58 counties.
The completeness of this data varies. Most counties rely on self-reporting from growers; some carefully modify it by sending staff members to ferret out planted vineyards. Some use direct observation; others make estimates based on burn and pesticide permits.
Napa County’s agricultural commissioner Dave Whitmer says his department works closely with growers to report accurate statistics. “Every year we do a detailed check with about a third of our vineyard owners. After three years or so, we’ve checked with just about everyone.” Whitmer then posts the information on the County of Napa web site at www.co.napa.ca.us, where you can find crop reports going as far back as 1921.
Maybe It’s Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a section called the Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS). FAS personnel in wine-growing countries provide excellent “Attaché Reports” on winegrape acreage and wine production. Their major works are the “annuals,” such as the French Wine Competition Annual and the Australian Wine Competition Annual, filled with valuable information from governmental agencies, trade associations, and personal contacts and observations.
FAS also produces “wine situation articles”—compilations and analyses of the Attaché Reports. The Southern Hemisphere report covers such countries as Australia, Chile and Argentina, while the Northern Hemisphere covers the United States and Europe. You can find these reports by going to www.fas.usda.gov/market.html and following the “Attaché Reports” link. Shari Kosco, the division’s analyst for wine, grapes and brandy, suggests that the web site’s search engine produces best results if you put in a specific data range for the search, rather than simply use the default of “Most Recent Day.”
The Truth Down Under
Author Lewis Perdue, who wrote The Wrath of Grapes, has long been a voice in the viticultural wilderness warning of a wine glut. He believes the fact is obvious, and that only denial of the statistics can lead one to believe otherwise. He considers Australians to be the most accurate source of information on worldwide wine supply.
As an example, Perdue points to the May 1999 issue of the Australian publication GrapeGrowers, whose cover story states: “35- to 42-percent price falls predicted.” The article reports predictions by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics (ABARE) that Australian winegrape prices are expected to drop by 35 percent for white grapes and by 42 percent for reds by 2003 or 2004. It further states that there is, “little room for an increase in domestic consumption, so the expected 38 percent increase in Australian winegrape production by 2004 is likely to be focused on export markets.” The article continues, stating that, “increases in world supply are expected to be greater than any increase in world demand.”
It takes little imagination to find lower grape prices in other wine producing countries as well, and to concur with ABARE that if Australian domestic consumption has only slight growth, excess wine production has to go somewhere else. Where else? The U.S. and the U.K. come to mind.
World Vineyard Acreage by Country - 1997
