The harvest this year has been the worst in the last 60 years, and they collected only 716,043.25 kilos, which is 55 percent less than in 2010, when 1,568,466 kilos were collected, as confirmed from the Control Board Denomination of Origin “Vinos de Lanzarote”. The average annual harvest of grapes in Lanzarote is estimated at around two million kilos, so the fall, with respect to the annual average is 65 percent less.
Although the figure represents an improvement over the initial estimates, they felt that the grapes harvested in 2011 would be around the 450,000 kilos, the Control Board calls the situation “catastrophic” for both growers and winemakers to the island in general , to “the negative effect this will have for tourism as a source of income, the abandonment of crops that provide a unique landscape in the world is La Geria”.
For this reason, the president of the Regulatory Council, Javier Betancort, stresses the need to urgently adopt courses of action to address the structural problems faced by the vineyard and that basically sums lanzarote “in the lack of generational and low profitability by far this year a kilo of grapes can be paid around $ 2 due to its scarcity, compared to 1.20 euros on average it cost last year. ”
In this regard, in recent days there was a meeting of the Insular Bureau Dynamism food and wine to find, along with the Cabildo de Lanzarote, new performance measures that complement food and wine Dynamism Island Plan launched last year by the former Corporation of the island, which make a difference for the wine sector in general and put in value as a tourist attraction The Geria and culture of the island.
Among the factors that explain the significant reduction in the harvest of this year, according to notes from the Regulatory Board are the high temperatures that occurred on the island last winter, “which prevented the vine making its customary and necessary rest vegetative allows stronger and produce more clusters. ”
Another reason was the attack of mildew on the vines suffered last March, a disease caused by the fungus serenity or gout, which also reduces production capacity. In addition, there was the heat wave experienced in Lanzarote in early summer, which affected the grapes in the process of maturation, but fortunately the damage was not higher because the high temperatures were accompanied not by high winds.
