Despite the drought, Bulgaria expects the harvest of grape to reach around 200 million kilogrammes, which will represent a double increase compared to last year.
This was announced by the Chairperson of the National Vine and Wine Chamber Radoslav Radev in an interview for Trud Daily. According to him, the expectations are both for good quantity and good quality of the grape harvest.
Radev foresees a lower purchase prices for grape this autumn due to the high yield.
Although the trend for growing more red wine grape varieties is sustained, Radev thinks that this will change due to the increasing consumption of white wine in recent years.
Radev stated that the export of Bulgarian wines to Russia has decreased by 60 % since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine, while the corresponding figure for other countries is 50%. He reminded that this drop in exports is despite the fact that wine is not featured on the embargo list introduced by Russia.