(Forbes) - The world of wine is changing, but changing slowly. Over the last few decades world wine production and con consumption have shifted from “traditional” countries to “new” wine countries. The latest numbers from the International Organisation for Wine and Vine (*) shows some of these changes.

France and Italy are still the biggest wine producing countries. But for how long?

Every year France and Italy competes for the top spot among the world’s wine producing countries. In 2014 France was the world’s biggest wine producer , according to the preliminary numbers from the OIV (International Organisation of Vine and Wine), producing almost 47 million hectolitres (=4.5 billion litres). Italy is far behind with just under 45 million hectolitres. The previous year, 2013, it was the other way around. Italy was the biggest producer.

This has been the case more or less “for ever”, as long as wine statistics have existed. France and Italy in the two top spots, followed by Spain, a distant third.

There is another long term trend though.  European countries are making less wine and more and more wine is made in other countries, outside Europe. One major reason for this is that the EU has had in place an agricultural policy that has subsides uprooting of vineyards.

Why, one might ask?

Well, there used to be a big wine glut, over-production, of wine in Europe, so uprooting vines was a way to reduce what was called The Wine Lake. This over-production was in turn created by production subsidies (or more precisely, production guarantees). European agriculture is not the most liberal of markets. But that is on the other hand the case in many other countries around the world too (for example in the US). All this is, or is in the process of being dismantled in the EU. Fortunately. But slowly.