Italian wine production at 50-year low

SOAVE, Italy - The time-honored traditions of Italian winemaking have been thrown out of rhythm by the earliest harvest on record in 70 years.

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There was little autumn picking this year. In some wine regions, growers began to harvest grapes during the first 10 days of August. In Soave, renowned for its white wines, the harvest started a month early ― Sept. 1 for the traditional wines made from a crush of Garganega grapes, and earlier for grapes to make bubbly Spumante.

It has been a year of inversions: While the north basked in a July heat wave, the south suffered an unusual rainy season, meaning a northern boom of succulent early grapes has been offset by a bust of sorts in the south, where a deadly fungus spread through vineyards, cutting yields in wine-rich Sicily ― one of Italy's top four wine regions ― by 30 percent.

Consequently, Italian wine producers are forecasting their lowest production in 50 years: 1.14 billion gallons, down 13 percent from a year ago, along with an increase in prices of up to 30 percent, said Giancarlo Prevarin, president of the Italian Winemakers Association.

Such cyclical ups and downs are nothing new to people whose fortunes are tied to the land.

This year's crop of Soave Garganega grapes, grown on reddish volcanic turf deposited east of Verona millennia ago, have been declared unusually robust. Even a late hailstorm in August ― the type of threat that can wipe out a season's work in a flash ― caused little damage because of the advanced stage of maturity.

"It will be a southern wine, less flowery, more fruity" pronounced Aldo Lorenzoni, director of the Soave consortium of winegrowers ― some 3,000 growers who produce 80 percent of the wine bearing the name Soave.

Most Soave growers work modest vineyards averaging around five acres and the vast majority, 2,800, contribute their pick to wines produced by a handful of local cooperatives, which have been working to improve their viniculture with experts at the University of Verona.

Lorenzoni says they will try to hold their prices steady ― noting every price spike in the last 30 years has been followed by a steep decline, difficult for small growers to manage.

This year's bumper crop comes at a moment of renaissance for Italian wines, which eclipsed French wines in U.S. sales in 2002, according to the Italian Winegrowers Association. Soave growers also note that white wines have found favor among diners seeking lighter fare ― a turnaround from the era they refer to as the "French paradox" when reports on the health benefits of red wines crashed the white wine market.

This early harvest wasn't just the result of the hot summer; 2003 was even hotter, wine growers point out. It was the exceptionally mild winter ― not unlike another early harvest easily recalled, 1945, the end of World War II.

Elderly residents recount fondly a spring so early that the cherries were already ripe and ready to eat when American soldiers arrived on April 25, Italy's liberation day.

This year, cherries were equally early. And by the time of Soave's annual Grape Festival at the end of September, which usually announces the start of the harvest, the vines surrounding this medieval town were nearly picked clean.

"Nature woke up early this year," said Giuseppe Coffele, who has more than 35 years experience making wine in Soave.

While there have always been incidents of exceptionally early harvests ― like in 1945 and 1972 ― Coffele says the tendency over the last two decades has been toward an ever-earlier picking time.

He has been keeping records of temperatures and precipitation on his hillside vineyards in the hamlet of Castelcerino above Soave for more than three decades, and notes that two decades ago grapes were generally picked in October into early November. Now that has become mid-September into October.

Prevarin, who himself is director of the Colli Berici cellars in nearby Lonigo, said the early harvest makes little difference to the final product: The point is to pick the grape when it is ripe ― be it August, September or October.

"The big difference is that we used to go on vacation in August," Prevarin said, "and now we need to work."