Amid a globally slow sales picture, activity on the bulk wine markets of France, Spain and South Africa managed to tick up through April into early May, for a variety of local reasons.
Barcelona Wine Week is a three-day event that offers wine lovers and members of the trade the chance to get to grips with Spanish wine. Sergey Panov reports on what’s happening in Spain in 2023.
More polyphenols. Less wax. A mutation discovered in a clone of Tempranillo suggests that some old vines can adapt to higher temperatures, reports Barnaby Eales.
Spain seems to have got off lightly once again. The rainfall at the beginning of mid-September spared most appellations, particularly in the north. At the beginning of September, forecasts were still predicting a historically small harvest.
The 2022 wine harvest in Spain is below the yield of the previous year. However, individual regions were able to harvest significantly more grapes than in 2021, as can be seen from figures published in the Spanish trade medium "La Semana Vitivinícola " and on the website sevi.net.
The dispute over the Basque part of Rioja, the "Rioja Alavesa", continues following the Basque regional government approval of the DO "Arabako Mahastiak - Viñedos de Álava". The Basques have a strong argument: higher quality standards.
In these times, it becomes almost the rule that heat, drought, hail or storms threaten the grapes. Nevertheless, the yield forecasts in Europe are different this year, as the examples of France and Spain show.
