Italy’s Ministry of Agriculture has announced the 2020 crop size. It is 2.4 million hectolitres higher than the last harvest forecast published by Assoenologi and the producers' association UIV at the end of October 2020.
The production register of the disbursement agency AGEA determined exactly 49,066,003 instead of the estimated 46.6 mill. hectolitres. According to the Italian wine journal Corriere Vinicolo, the relatively high difference came about mainly because the winegrowers made less use of the (complicated) aid programme for a voluntary yield reduction than assumed.
Production breaks down as follows: White wines account for well over half of the production with more than 26.6 million hectolitres, while red wines account for 20.4 million. Veneto remains the region with the highest volume with 11.7 hectolitres, followed by Puglia (9 mill. hl) and Emilia-Romagna (7.9 mill. hl). Sicily is in 4th place (3.66 mill. hl) and Abruzzo is in 5th position with 3.49 mill. hectolitres.
Over 21.2 mill. hectolitres are DOC qualities, of which 13.1 mill. are white and 8.1 mill. red wines. 12.8 million hectolitres were certified as IGT (6.7 million red/6.1 million white). The 2020 harvest was 3 per cent higher than in 2019 (47.5 mill. hl).
