China now has more vineyards than France


With 799,000 hectares — or 1.97 million acres — of land set aside for vineyards, China is now the No. 2 wine-growing area in the world.
Spain remains in first place with 1.02 million hectares, but China pushed France down to third place, the BBC reports. The International Organization of Vine and Wine said France still produces the most wine, 4.67 million hectoliters (mhl) a year, and brings in the most money from selling wine abroad (more than $8.4 billion).
The U.S. continues to consume the most wine in the world — 30.7 mhl, or 13 percent of all global wine produced in 2014 — followed by France and Italy. Overall, global wine consumption was down in 2014 by 2.4 mhl, to 240 mhl (6.34 billion gallons).
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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