Italy's 2011 wine harvest smallest in 60 years

A worker harvests grapes in Fabbri's vineyard in the Chiantishire in Tuscany, south of Florence, October 4, 2011.

MILAN (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.

About 9,300 hectares (ha) of vineyards were destroyed under an EU program in 2010, on top of more than 22,000 ha which were dug up in 2008 and 2009, it said.

The EU program, which started in August 2008, offers cash to less competitive winemakers to dig up vines to cut back output aiming to drain Europe's "wine lakes" and remove 175,000 ha of land under vines out of the EU's total of 3.6 million ha.

Italian growers' increased efforts to prune grapes to improve quality also helped to reduce quantity, the report said.

Wine output in Tuscany, famous for its Chianti red and its premium cousins Brunello di Montalcino and Nobile di Montepulciano, fell 15 percent from 2010, the report said.

The region of Piedmont, known for its full-body red Barolo, has seen a 10 percent fall in output this year.

Output in Sicily, one of Italy's biggest wine producing regions, plunged 25 percent, hit by vine-digging. Output in Veneto, Italy's largest wine making region, fell 5 percent.

Turning to wine sales, Assoenologi said Italian wine exports rose 14.1 percent in value and 15.4 percent in volumes in the first six months of 2011 compared with the same period of 2010. Italy sold almost 50 percent of its output abroad in 2010, it said.

(Reporting by Svetlana Kovalyova)