This year’s grape harvest in Santorini is making history—for all the wrong reasons. Total production is expected to hover around just 350–400 tons. That’s a symbolic volume for such a world-renowned appellation, when in the past decade yields averaged 2,500–3,000 tons, and as recently as 2003 production reached 5,000 tons.
Vines at their limits
“The vineyard’s crisis didn’t appear overnight,” explains Stefanos Koundouras, professor of viticulture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. “It’s largely the result of years of neglect. Walk through the southern part of the island down to Akrotiri and you see abandoned basket vines—decades without proper care, pruning, renewal, or investment.”
Three consecutive years of drought and hail then struck, and the ancient vines couldn’t cope. Today, many vineyards are stripped bare, producing no more than 1–2 baskets per stremma (about 0.25 acres)—a fraction of what they once delivered.
The economic impact is equally dramatic. Grape prices have skyrocketed from €0.85/kg in 2010 to €10–12/kg this year, with talk of reaching €15. Since a single 750 ml bottle of Santorini requires about 1.4 kg of grapes, producers are struggling to remain competitive in international markets.
A vicious cycle has formed: growers, understandably, raised their prices to survive, while winemakers entered bidding wars, offering increasingly unsustainable sums. With average vineyard holdings at just 5 stremmata per grower, investment remains minimal, further deepening the problem. Competition for “a handful of grapes” has become fiercer than ever.
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