Three cheers for Alicante wine

THE FIGURES from this year’s grape harvest show that Alicante wine is on the up again, eclipsing last year’s poor showing.

The board which supervises the protected designation of origin (PDO) area revealed this week that 30.5 million kilos of grapes had been collected during the harvest during the late summer and autumn.

A PDO spokesman revealed that this was 15.80% more than the 26.3 million kilos registered last year.

However, he noted that the average over the last decade has been 33 million kilos.

The spokesman explained that the harvest this year had been interrupted by inclement weather.

“It started early but was then hit by a long delay in the maturing of the grapes due to the rain in September,” he said.

This led to the harvest being extended until the end of October.

The spokesman explained that this had led to a small reduction in the alcohol content of the wine produced from this year’s grapes.

He highlighted that wines produced from Muscat grapes would be of good quality, ‘along with other white wines’.

Red wines such as the ‘monastrell’ variety ‘will require more work in the cellars’.

Alicante’s PDO area measures some 10,337 hectares which are divided into subzones.

The largest of these is the Vinalopó Medio making up 58% of the land mass, Vinalopó Alto (30%), Marina Alta (7%), with the remainder in El Comtat, L’Alcoiá and Marina Baja.