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2. Spanish Production
According to data from FEGA, the Spanish Agricultural Guarantee Fund, wine and must production in Spain rose to 44.36 million hectoliters in the 2006/07 season, of which more than 39 million were wine and 5 million were must.
Of the 39 million hectoliters of wine, 13.3 million correspond to quality wines with a denomination of origin, equivalent to 30% of the total wine production and 8% more than 2005/06. Table wines with a geographical indication and country wines represent 4.09 million hectoliters, a 60% increase over the previous year; while 21.7 million hectoliters are table wines without a geographical indication, which have increased by only 1.4%.
By autonomous community, 51.8% of total wine production comes from Castilla-La Mancha, followed by Catalonia, Extremadura and the Valencia region. Rioja and Castilla-Leon are ranked fifth and sixth.
By hectares, the largest area belongs to Castilla-La Mancha (45.6% of all vines for wine production), followed by Extremadura (7.8%), the region of Valencia (6.6%), Castilla-Leon (5.8%), Catalonia (5.7%), Murcia (4%), Rioja (3.8%), Aragon (3.8%), Andalusia (3.2%), Galicia (2.9%), Navarre (2.2%), Canary Islands (1.6%) and Madrid (1.6%). The other regions account for lower percentages.
By color, more than 21 million hectoliters were red or rose wines, 53.4% and 18.22% of the total respectively, while46.6% were white wines.
Wine production, including must, represents 2% of total final agricultural output and 3.3% of the value of all crop production.
In 2005 the wine industry employed 22,862 people, accounting for 5.99% of the total employed by the agrifood industry. The value of sales by winemakers in the same year rose to €4.963 billion, equivalent to 6.45% of total sales for the sector. In 2004, the last year available, there were 4,109 companies in the sector accounting for 12.9% of all agrifood companies, ranked third behind the bakery, pastry and biscuit industry, and the meat industry.
Spain’s geographical position, its climatic differences and its wide variety of soil types makes the peninsula a privileged place for producing wines with very different characteristics. Vines are grown in all 17 of the country’s autonomous regions, even though nearly half of the total hectares are found in Castilla-La Mancha (540,000 ha) which is the geographical region with the largest area under vine cultivation in the world, followed by Extremadura (nearly 100,000 ha), Castilla-Leon, Valencia, Catalonia, Aragon, Murcia, Andalusia and Rioja. Nevertheless, the region of La Rioja dedicates the highest proportion of its land area to vine growing as a percentage of its cropped land. The average farm size in Spain is 3.34 hectares, although this varies between regions. The smallest are found in Galicia and the largest in Murcia.
Of the total area dedicated to this crop, nearly 60% has a designation of origin classification, growing “quality wine produced in a specific region” (vcprd) and the number of hectares is rising to the detriment of areas growing table wines.
Spain has 73 areas classified as producing quality wine in a specific region, of which five are classified as quality wines (vinos de calidad), three are single estate wines (vinos de pago) and the remainder are designation of origin, which following the European production model, maintain strict control over the quantity produced, wine making practices and the quality of the wines that are produced in each zone. The first authorized designations date back to 1932 and were Jerez-Xères-Sherry, Manzanilla de Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Málaga, Montilla-Moriles, Rioja, Tarragona, Priorato, Alella, Utiel Requena, Valencia, Alicante, Ribeiro, Cariñena, Penedés, Condado de Huelva, Valdepeñas, La Mancha, Navarre and Rueda.
There are also 43 classifications of table wine with the right to use the traditional “Vinos de la Tierra en España”description (Spanish country wines).
There are designations of origin in every autonomous region except Cantabria and Santander, while in some regions such as La Rioja, the Basque Country, Navarre or Catalonia, nearly all the wine produced is classified as “quality wine produced in a specific region” (vcprd), meaning that they are classified under a specific designation.
Of the total wine produced, 66.7% is table wine and 33.3% is vcprd. In terms of grape varieties, 61.5% of the area is planted with white varieties, especially in the regions of Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Andalusia and Catalonia. The latter two regions use white varieties for producing liqueur wines and Cava respectively.
The most common grape varieties in Spain are Airén, Tempranillo, Bobal, Garnacha Tinta, Monastrell, Pardina, Macabeo and Palomino, listed by order of importance in terms of growing area. Of these only Tempranillo, Bobal, Garnacha tinta and Monastrell are red varieties, the rest are white.
Red wine accounts for 43.5% of Spanish wine production and the regions of Murcia, La Rioja, Aragon and Valencia account for the majority of red wine produced in Spain.
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