The full range of countries

Our Carmen Winediego experience on Friday had me wondering just how broad the list of wine-producing countries is, and how they stack up against each other (some people made such enthusiastically convincing presentations that I thought perhaps my gauge might be off).  The Wine Institute has a tabulation from 2010, in which it lists 59 countries.  At the bottom of the list is Kyrgyzstan; at the top, as we know, are France and Italy (with approximately 16% and 18% of the world share, respectively).  China was already in 13th place at this point, with 1.6% of the global production.  Surprises for me included Russia (11th place) and the preponderance of Eastern European (very poor and corrupt Moldova in 14th, Ukraine in 19th, Bulgaria in 21st, et al.) and Central Asian (Uzbekistan in 37th, Kazakhstan in 38th, Turkmenistan in 39th) countries.  So many of these are countries with low GDP and troubled post-communist systems, and one imagines that demand for these wines is pretty localized within the country of production or within a region.  Also a number of Islamic countries had robust wine industries in spite of their relative nearness to the equator and Islam's prohibition on drinking (Algeria in 30th, Morocco in 35th, Tunisia in 36th) -- it seems the Maghreb in particular has a more congenial attitude towards habits on the other shores of the Mediterranean.  The UK (58th) and Israel (50th) are quite small -- though the arguments were made that they have plenty of avenues to grow into powerhouses.

However, there are outposts in far more extreme locations.  Mike Mester and I had confronted the climate issues of northern Mexico and the way in which heat can challenge or even prohibit viable wine production.  Vinepair collected some more exceptional instances.  There is even a winery on Tahiti.  The world's northernmost commercial vineyard is Lerkekasa, in operation since 2008, located in Telemark, Noway, to the west of Oslo.  However, even farther north in Finland, there is an experimental vineyard at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant (nuclear wine sounds terrifying to me, but who am I to judge).

It seems as well that part of establishing wine production in an unfamiliar country is a point of pride and elegance -- we can and we do.  Whether people outside the cultures in question have any desire to drink them seems an unlikelier proposition.