Lushes Beware! Global Wine Shortage Looms

Report finds largest undersupply of wine in nearly 50 years

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Laszlo Balogh / Reuters

A wine expert inspects a wine bottle at a vault containing 280,000 bottles of museum wines, some of which date back to 1895, in Tolcsva village October 22, 2013.

New wine-producing countries are popping up around the world, but not fast enough it seems, as a global wine shortage is looming.

A report released by Morgan Stanley Research on Monday shows that there was an undersupply of about 300 million cases of wine in 2012, the largest deficit recorded in almost 50 years, Quartz reports.

Growing demand in the U.S. and China has played a part in the shortfall, with the latter quadrupling its consumption over the past five years. At the same time production in Europe, which produces 60% of the world’s vintages, has declined sharply.

Since 2004, which the report marks as “peak wine,” the output from Europe has shrunk by a quarter. Perhaps now is as good a time as any to savor the blessed grape in humbler gulps.

 

 

[Quartz]