02/19/07 Wine Supply & Demand

Wine, Supply & Demand. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Joseph Ciatti has been in the wine business all of his life. His brokerage firm sells all types of wine products worldwide. He is in a position to see the supply and demand of the wine industry. CIATTI: The U.S. is 8% of the world market production. We're number 4 in the world. We have 5% of the vine acreage. Some of the other New World areas, Argentina, Australia 5%; Chile, South Africa small amounts but growing. The real production of course is with the Old World. Spain, Italy and France have over 50% of the production of wine in the world. Right now Ciatti says the hot varietals are being imported since the U.S. production is still on the short side. CIATTI: Pino Grigio, pino noir and reisiling, of course reisling is a major player here in Washington. We're short in California on those items. I think you're short of reisling and Oregon is short certainly in their supply of pino noir, pino grigio and pino gris and so we see a lot of those wines right now being brought into the U.S. in bulk. Ciatti says the Australia production this year is way down. CIATTI: The interesting thing is that as they go into their '07 crush which is going on right now; they are southern. They're expecting a very short crop this year, off about 40%. The reason being in the cool climate areas of Australia they had a frost and then they've had a real drought. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.