Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

Unit E1: Agriculture and fisheries

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The domain VIT contains data on the structure of vineyards.

The data are organised into 4 tables:

• Table 1: Wine-grower holdings by type of production at national and regional level
• Table 2: Wine-grower holdings by size class (and aggregated type of production) at national level
• Table 3: Wine-grower by degree of specialisation and size class at national level
• Table 4: Main vine varieties by age class at national and regional level

The Commission needs accurate information on the production potential of the EU vineyards in order to be able to manage properly the wine sector. For this reason all Member States having more than 500 ha of vines for other purposes than table grape production collect on a regular and continuous basis structural data on vineyards since 1979.

From 2015 onwards the data are collected from national/regional vineyard registers, which are administrative registers containing information on wine-growing holdings.  

Data are available for national level and for NUTS 1 and 2 levels.

The area is classified into areas in production and those not yet in production and further according to the type of grapes produced.

The main varieties are classified according to the colour of grape. 

The territorial breakdown is related the NUTS classification.

 The data collection covers all Member States having more than 500 ha of vines for other purposes than table grape production.

 The data collection covers all holdings in the vineyard register. The registers contain all wine growers having minimum of 0.1 ha of area planted for vines for other purposes than table grapes.  

Vines for other purposes than producing table grapes. The vineyard survey covers vines for other purposes than producing table grapes. Vines producing table grapes are covered by the orchards survey. Vines for other purposes refer to all area under vines to be included in the vineyard register as established under Article 3 of the Commission Regulation (EC) No 436/2009 laying down the detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation No 479/2008 as regards the vineyard register, compulsory declarations and the gathering of information to monitor the wine market, the documents accompanying consignments of wine products and the wine sector registers.

The vines for other purposes than table grapes are mainly used for the production of wine, dried grapes, other spirits and vegetative propagation of vines.

Area under vines includes areas

• in production;
• not yet in production;
• area producing material for vegetative propagation of vines.

The area does not include abandoned areas which are not any more in production and have not been harvested for at least eight years.

Vines in production/not yet in production are

• the vines for which the grapes are harvested (vines in production);
• the young vines which are planted but which do not bear grapes or the grapes are not yet harvested (vines not yet in production).

Abandoned vines are the vines which have not been harvested for at least eight years.

Dual-purpose grapes are the grapes from vine varieties, listed in the classification of vine varieties drawn up by Member States in accordance with Article 81(2) to (6) of Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 establishing a common organisation of the markets in agricultural products, that are produced, for the same administrative unit, both as wine grape varieties and as table grape varieties, varieties for the production of dried grapes or varieties for the production of wine spirits.

The area intended to produce solely table grapes were included in the orchards survey. If vineyards produce dual purpose grapes (good for e.g. wine and dessert purposes) they shall be included in the Vineyard survey.

Wines with PDO and PGI are the wines included in the two EU schemes used for promoting and protecting names of quality wines:

• Protected designation of origin (PDO) designates the name of a product which must be produced within a determined geographical area using recognised and recorded know-how. All products with PDO status must be produced exclusively with grapes from the area in question.
• Protected geographical indication (PGI) designates a product with a quality, reputation or other specific features that can be attributed to a determined geographical area. All products with PGI status must be produced with at least 85 % of the grapes coming from the area in question.

An area under vines should be classified in the category "PDO", as long as that area complies with the requirements of Regulation No 1308/2013 and the corresponding national rules (so called "cahiers de charges) of a given PDO. If PDO and PGI zones/areas overlap, and a certain area under vines complies with the specifications of both PDO and PGI, it shall be included only as "PDO" in order to avoid double counting. This principle is valid for all tables where the PDO/PGI definitions are used.

However, if an area under vines is located inside a PDO area but does not comply with the specifications of that PDO, it should be classified in the vineyard data collection either in the "PGI" category (if it complies with the PGI specifications) or as an area which is not eligible neither for the production of PDO or PGI wines (non-PDO and Non-PGI).

This classification is independent of the individual decisions taken each year by wine growers, since they can choose to use 100% of the grapes coming from an area under vines eligible for a PDO only for the production of wines without a PDO/PGI in a certain year, and take completely different decisions the next year. In a data collection which focuses more on the structural aspect of vineyards the classification needs to be based on the compliance with PDO/PGI specifications rather than on what "wine certification" decisions were taken by the growers in the year of the survey.

Materials for the vegetative propagation of vines refer to areas covered by nurseries and parent vines for root-stocks.

Age of vines is calculated from the wine-growing year in which they were planted or grafted.

Main variety is a variety grown on at least 500 ha at national level.

The statistical unit is the agricultural holding growing vines for other purposes than table grapes on an area bigger than 0,1 ha and which is included in the vineyard register.

The target population is the universe of the agricultural holdings vines for other purposes than table grapes on an area bigger than 0,1 ha and which is included in the vineyard register.

Vines cultivated  in Member States with a total area under vines of less than 500 hectares are excluded from the data collection.

European Union.

Data are collected only in those Member States on whose territory the area of vines cultivated for other purposes than table grapes is at least 500 hectares. The included countris are shown in the table below:

Data collections have been conducted since 1979 every ten years until 2009. From the 2015 data collection onwards the planned periodicity is 5 years.

However, only data from 1999 onwards are available in the Eurostat online database.

As regard the 2009 survey, France and Italy conducted the survey together with the agricultural census in 2010.

Not applicable

Two  units are  used:

• the units of measure for the characteristics (area in ha) and 
• the number of agricultural holdings having these characteristics.

 The reference period is the wine-growing year: from 1st August to 31 July. The data extraction form the vineyard register was done in most countries on 31 July 2015 (for the 2015 data collection).

The rules governing the vineyard data collection are laid down in Regulation (EU) No 1337/2011.

There is no data sharing.

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

The  Member States mark the cells containing confidential data with C-flag. Eurostat publishes only non-confidential data. For confidential data only the C-flag is published.

The data are disseminated as soon as available. There is no predefined release calendar.

Not applicable.

In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10 - 'Accessibility and clarity') respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.

Every 5 years.

News releases on-line.

Results are published in "Agriculture, forestry and fishery statistics" Statistical book and statistics explained articles.

The results of the 2015 data collection are published in the statistics explained article "Wine-growing statistics" and in the news release "Over 3 million hectares of vineyards in the EU" n°57/2017.

Eurostat database.

Not applicable.

None.

See Eurostat Handbook for Structural Statistics on Vineyards (in Annex).

National quality reports and the EU-level Quality Report will be published in 2017.

Systematic data validation and national quality report assessment is carried out in Eurostat.

National Quality reports  comprise information on each of the quality aspects defined by Eurostat:

Relevance: in section 4 of the Quality Report; Timeliness: section 5, Punctuality: section 6, Accessibility and clarity: section 7, Comparability: section 8 and Coherence: section 9.

The Commission, in order to fulfill its obligations under the Treaties and the EU provisions on the common market organization of wine, requires accurate and up to date data on the production potential of vines in the EU. In order to assess the Community wine market situation and developments therein, statistical data collections covering the total area under vines should be conducted in vine-growing holdings.

These data collections should help to follow the production potential of wine and can support political measures aiming to adjust this potential to market demand, keep the development of wine production potential under permanent observation, and help the assessment of the production of wine in the Community.

The main user of Wine-growing Statistics data is DG Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission.  Other important users are: other Commission Directorates, other European institutions or agencies (EFSA), National administration services, National Statistical Offices, the economic actors as traders and processing industries, producer groups and unions, research institutes, journalists and general public.

No user satisfaction survey exists.

Data from Italy and Malta are missing. The completeness of the available data is good.

The accuracy of the data is directly linked to the accuracy of the vineyard register.  

Not applicable as data are collected from an administrative source.

Not available.

The data are transmitted to Eurostat at the end of September the year after the reference year (30 September 2016 for the 2015 data collection).

Most countries respect the deadlines.

Good. All countries use comparable methods.

The data source changed in many countries between 2009 and 2015 data collections from statistical surveys into the vineyard register.

In some Member States the change of the data source caused a break in the time series.

The results of the structural vineyard data collection are disseminated through statistical tables of the vit domain of Eurostat online database.

Annual data on area and production are disseminated in Crop Products (apro_acs_a). Cross domain consistency is good for most countries.

The dataset internal coherence is good as all data come from the same data source.

The burden is relative small as the data are extracted from the vineyard register.

If some errors are detected during a specific analysis, the data set is revised.

The data are validated by Member States and checked by Eurostat. If there is lack of coherence in a data set or with historical data, Eurostat asks Member States for justification or revision. Error detection leads to subsequent revisions.

The data are extracted form the national/regional Vineyard registers, which are maintained on the basis of the following Regulation: Commission Regulation (EC) No 436/2009 

Every ten years until 2009 and every 5 years from 2015 onwards.

Data are extracted from national/regional administrative vineyard registers.

The data are validated by Member States and Eurostat.

The data are checked by successive steps on:

• the structure of the data set
• the internal relationship between tables
• the  aggregated results
• the cross check with vineyard data from previous years
• the cross check with other agricultural statistics.

Member States send tables as defined in the legislation to Eurostat. Aggregation is used to produce EU-level data.

Eurostat does not perform any adjustment on the data received from the Member States.

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