(Reuters) - Wine output in Italy fell to the lowest levels in more than 60 years this year hit by an extremely hot and dry September, but the new vintage quality is promising, an industry report said. Italy's wine output dropped to 4.03 billion litres in 2011, down 14 percent from last year and well below a 4.76 billion litre annual average in the 2001-2010 period, according to a report by the Italian enologists' body Assoenologi. "We are facing the scarcest harvest in the past 60 years. To find a similar quantity we should go back to 1948 when 40.4 million hectolitres (4.04 billion litres) were produced," the report said. The output fell also because Italian growers, especially in the southern regions of Sicily and Puglia as well as northern region of Emilia Romagna, had dug up vines encouraged by the European Union, the report said.