The price of grapes amid irregular harvests: the countryside calls for recipes to provide stability

In 2025, the wine sector finished one of its shortest harvests in recent years with 31 million hectoliters; despite this reduction, farmers assure that it has not affected the prices at origin and, therefore, they ask for measures that provide stability such as multi-year contracts and that production costs are covered. The price of the grape and the profitability of its cultivation is a puzzle that the sector solves each year after fitting the pieces of the collection area, the quality, the acidity, the alcohol content of the grape, and even the size of the cooperative, an equation with a minimum legal standard: that the farmer covers his costs. On the other side, the wineries; the general director of the Spanish Wine Federation (FEV), José Luis Benítez, has emphasized in statements to Efeagro that "the vast majority of wineries comply with the chain law" and that he is in favor of medium-term contracts, a measure that he has been "defending for a long time." Benítez has insisted ...