Romania ranked 13th in the world and sixth in the European Union by amount of wine last year. The leaders of the ranking are Italy, France and Spain. Italy is world’s largest wine producer, almost 51 million hectoliters last year, according to OIV data.
Romania ranks 11th in the world by total area under vines in vineyards and fifth in the EU. Despite being on the biggest producers of wine in the world, it is not also one of its biggest exporters.
Romania only exports 4% of all the wine it makes a year, which puts it on the second to bottom place in the EU (among winemaking countries that is), followed only by Malta. In comparison, the major producers like Spain and Italy export about half of their production. Romania’s annual wine exports stand at more than EUR20 million, while imports are twice as high.
Romanian consumers bought 3.8 million hectoliters of wine last year or about 20 liters per capita, ZF has calculated based on OIV data. Romania ranks 14th in the world and sixth in the EU by wine consumption. The country saw its highest consumption of wine in 2014, more than 23 liters per capita.
Romania had about 220 companies operating under the `Manufacture of wine from grape’ NACE code in 2015, according to Finance Ministry data. Their revenue stood at 650 million lei (EUR150 million), about flat on 2014. Only 166 of them were active, that is posted more than zero revenue.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)