LISBON: Wine production in Portugal’s Alentejo region is expected to fall by 20 percent this year after a long hot summer and a lack of rain, the local winemaking commission said on Monday, noting that despite this the quality of the wine would be “good.”
“Overall we are expecting production to be of good quality, but there will be less wine from the region on the market,” the President of the Alentejo Regional Winemaking Commission (CVRA), Francisco Mateus, told Lusa News Agency. According to Mateus, “a decrease of around 20 percent” in wine production “is practically a given,” as there are fewer grapes due to the weather conditions throughout the year.
“There were times when rain fell heavily in a short period of time and, then, we had a lot of time without rain and the summer was extremely hot, with very high temperatures for a lot of days running,” he noted. Last year the Alentejo region produced 115 million litres of wine, the president of the CVRA said. The region is Portugal’s largest wine producing region by volume, accounting for 47 percent of all the wine made, and by value (46 percent).
Alentejo wines are produced by 1,900 producers and 235 companies sell wines of controlled origin from the region (DOC) as certified by the CVRA. The Alentejo region has eight recognised winemaking sub-regions (Portalegre, Borba, Redondo, Reguengos de Monsaraz, Vidigueira, Moura, Évora and Granja/Amareleja), and exports its wines all over the world, with Brazil, the United States, China, Angola and Switzerland as some of its main markets.
