Wine Facts: Top 10 Wine Producing Countries

Unable to share enough wine facts during our normal opening hours, we’ve decided to go “e” with the fact disbursement. Every week we’re going to include a mini-feature on interesting wine facts. You'll be able to find them all under the tag "Wine Facts" within this blog.

To kick off: the big picture – where wine is made and how much is being made. The following table lists the world’s 10 biggest wine producing countries, plus our beloved UK’s wine production*. By way of conversion, the UK’s production was nearly 2 million bottles.

1 France 51,700
2 Italy 49,631
3 Spain 38,173
4 USA 23,579
5 Argentina 15,400
6 Australia 14,260
7 China 11,800
8 South Africa 9,400
9 Germany 8,995
10 Chile 8,450
59 United Kingdom 14

Of the top ten wine producing countries, all have grown in production volumes since 1996 except the Old World superstars: France, Italy and Germany. Spain has hardly had a steady ride over the 10 year period either, with (relatively) widely fluctuating annual production figures. The most aggressive production growth in the top ten comes from, little surprise, Australia, which almost doubled its production in the last ten years.

The surprises? Did you know that China would be in the Top 10? Or that Argentina produces more than Australia?

* Source: The Wine Institute World Wine Production By Country, Trade Data And Analysis (TDA), volume figures are given in thousands of Hectoliters based on 2006 production.