The harvests do not stop advancing year after year. Harvesting will begin next Tuesday in Gramona de Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, with the Chardonnay grapes for its sparkling wines. Also that day, Raimat could carry out a symbolic nocturnal grape harvest. Harvesting has already begun in the DO Montilla-Moriles (Córdoba), around two weeks earlier than usual. On July 11 they already gave the starting gun in Lanzarote.
A very hot campaign begins in Catalonia, marked both by the drought and the drastic drop in production as well as by the low prices that the large wineries want to pay for the grapes. In quite a few areas of large production, the fall could be up to 50% compared to last year, in which there was also a drought.
The Minister for Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda of the Generalitat, David Mascort, states that “it is key to ensure adequate profitability of the cava value chain, and to do so with the participation of all the links in the sector”. The new e-Registre Vitivinícola de Catalunya that will enter into force this year to guarantee the traceability of grapes in the winery and the creation of a unit of inspectors are positively valued.
Both the Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives of Catalonia (FCAC) and the agricultural unions Union of Farmers (UP) and Young Farmers and Ranchers of Catalonia (JARC) have raised their voices in the sky after learning the estimated production costs per kilo of grapes in 2023, of between €0.45 and €0.50/kg, which includes the study of the costs of grape production and the elaboration of Cava base wine promoted by the Department of A Climatic ction.
Bearing in mind that one of the important objectives of the study is to serve as a reference for companies that buy grapes to establish the price, UP has urged the Department of Climate Action to “ensure that, unlike what happens now, family labor costs are included in the calculation of production costs.” The union points out that if they were taken into account, the cost of production would rise between 8 and 12 cents per kilo of grapes, reaching a price of around €0.60, a figure to which the necessary profit margin would still have to be added to guarantee the viability of each agricultural company. For this reason, they warn that you have to pay more than 60 cents so that the winegrower “can earn a living.”
Regarding the study, UP also disagrees with the expected grape production yields per hectare, which are between 5,414 and 6,768 kg/ha depending on the variety. The union considers that these values ??are very far from the reality of the current production of the Catalan vineyards.
For his part, Joan Josep Raventós, head of wine and cava at the FCAC, argues that “unfortunately, the figure of 17 cents per kilo to cover the costs of making Cava base wine this campaign will be insufficient, because we have to face the drop in production due to the drought, which is expected to exceed 40%, which will result in a cost adjustment by the cooperative wineries that produce it.”
The representative of JARC, Jaume Domènech, regrets that the Generalitat’s study did not take into account “the extra cost and risk” that supposes that 50% of the vineyard is organic or family work, the increase in real costs or the sharecropping plots. For aged cavas, he states that you have to pay a minimum of €0.65 per kilo, and €0.78 for those with superior aging.
