07 April, 2017

By VIVA Team

Spain supplies around 30% of the EU's wine on an annual basis - more than any other country.

Spain supplies around 30% of the EU’s wine on an annual basis – more than any other country.

Spanish wine has long held a rather unique position among the psyche of wine drinkers the world over.

Not quite boasting the tradition and exceptionalism of French wine, the romanticism of Italian wine, nor the buzz of New World wines from Chile, Australia and South Africa, Spanish wine has typically been the sort you take to a housewarming – not cheap, but you’re not splashing out just because friends have bought a new house…

But it is this position as the ‘everyman’ of the wine world that has allowed Spain to become the European Union’s (EU) foremost producer of wine, with data compiled this week by Eurostat revealing that vineyards in Spain comprise 30% of the EU’s total.

At 941,000 hectares, there are more vineyards by area in Spain than in any other EU member, with France in second place on 803,000 hectares (25%), Italy third with 610,000 hectares (19%) and Portugal a distant fourth, with 199,000 hectares (just 6%).

Interestingly, Romania – which is the fifth-largest wine-producing EU member with 184,000 hectares – has the most individual wineries with 855,000, beating Spain into second place (518,000).

However, Spain’s role as both producer of its own varieties and also supplier of grapes for Italian and French wines makes it the EU’s most vital producer of plonk. Within the country the Castilla-la Mancha region is the largest, boasting 434,000 hectares alone – or 14% of the entire EU’s vineyard area. Other large regions include Languedoc-Roussillon (293,00 hectares) and Aquitaine (144,000 hectares) – both in France.

As a whole, the EU has 3.2 million hectares of vineyards, spread across 2.4 million individual sites. Most EU nations have at least a handful of vineyards, right the way through from Romania at the top to Luxembourg (326 vineyards) and the UK (553 vineyards).

EU countries with the grand total of zero vineyards include Belgium (they have beer), Ireland (they have Guinness), Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (they have too much cold weather), Poland, Sweden and Finland (ditto) and – perhaps surprisingly – the Netherlands.