Italian Wine-Grape Harvest Looks ``Good to Excellent,'' Grower Group Says

Italy’s wine-grape growers expect a good harvest this fall, with the northern Piedmont and Trentino regions poised to produce an “excellent” crop, a study showed.

Overall, Italy will produce about 46.5 million hectoliters (1.2 billion gallons) of wine, around the same level as 2009, according to Rome-based growers’ lobby Confagricoltura. Northern regions will see a 4.3 percent increase in output, compared with a 0.3 percent gain in the south.

“The 2010 harvest will be a good year in terms of quantity and quality,” Confagricoltura said in an e-mailed release today. While weather changes could still affect crops this month, “both climactic conditions and signs from the vineyards allow us to be optimistic about the quality of the new wines.”

The best harvests will probably be in Piedmont, Umbria and Trentino, according to the release. The northwestern region of Piedmont, which produces some of Italy’s best-known wines such as Barolo, is set to increase output by 10 percent from 2009.

The central Tuscany region, famous for Chianti red wine, will have a “good to excellent harvest,” as will southern areas such as Puglia and Sicily, Confagricoltura said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeffrey Donovan in Rome at jdonovan26@bloomberg.net

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