It can be tricky to read statistics on viticulture in different countries. It is important to know whether the statistics apply to both grapes grown for wine production and for eating.
The world today has 7.4 million hectares of grapes. Five countries account for 50% of the surface: Spain (13%), China (12%), France (11%), Italy (9%) and Turkey (6%).
China has a large acreage of vines but does not make much wine. In fact, 35% of the world’s table grapes come from China. 84% of China’s vineyards are destined to be table grapes. Just over 10% of China’s grapes are made into wine.
Even less wine is made from Turkey’s 448,000 hectares, only 4%. Iran is another country with a large vineyard area, 153,000 hectares, but all of it is turned into table grapes or raisins. In the US, only 66% of the grapes grown will be fermented, the rest is table grapes. So, of these 7.4 million hectares in the world, 57% will be turned into wine, 4.2 million ha, 36% will be eaten as table grapes and 7% as raisins.
Numbers from the recently concluded OIV world congress. Read more: State of the vitiniculture world market OIV (pdf)
