Dutch winegrowers are enjoying a successful wine year: 1.5 million bottles of wine in 2025

Dutch winegrowers harvested around twice as many grapes last wine year as they did the year before. This is according to figures published by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) in collaboration with the Association of Dutch Wine Producers (VNWP). In total, an estimated 11,752 hectolitres of Dutch wine were produced, amounting to over one and a half million bottles.
Source: VNWP | Image: ChatGPT

The figures from the RVO show a sharp increase compared to 2024, when barely half that amount was produced. This was due to severe night frosts and poor flowering caused by heavy rainfall. Last year, weather conditions were considerably more favourable for wine production. The warm, dry and, above all, sunny summer even led to the second-highest Dutch grape harvest on record. Three-quarters of the wine produced is white, with the remainder being rosé or red.

Sun-drenched season

The summer of 2025 was according to the KNMI one of the warmest since the institute began recording temperatures. The average was around 18.5 °C, which is favourable for the so-called Huglin index. This index takes into account the daily minimum and maximum temperatures during the grape growing season. To produce quality grapes, a minimum value of around 1500 is required. It is estimated that this index stood at around 1700 in the central Netherlands last year (approximately eight hours of sunshine per day). Sufficient hours of sunshine, therefore, for excellent quality wines.

Higher quality

Although the total yield fell just short of a record, the quality of the wines is higher than in 2024. This is particularly evident in the number of wines produced with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) classification: approximately 19% of the entire harvest. Never before has this proportion been so high for Dutch wines. For wines with this PDO classification, the quality requirements are significantly higher than for other wines. Within each PDO region, rules and standards are laid down in a product specification.

A few more vineyards

In addition to the volume of wine produced and the varieties grown, the RVO also compiles an annual survey of the number of winegrowers and the total area of vineyards. Last year’s harvest came from 220 vineyards covering a total of around 350 hectares. This represents another slight increase, a trend that has been evident for several years. The growth is partly due to the expansion of existing vineyards and partly to the establishment of (small) new vineyards. Of these, 79% processed the grapes into wine themselves. Two per cent sold the grapes on for wine production, whilst the rest outsourced the work to a winemaker.

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