Vineyard prices in Europe: how much is a hectare of vines worth in France, Spain and Italy?

A hectare of vines changes hands for €5,137 in Murcia, in southern Spain. The same hectare, planted with nebbiolo in the commune of Barolo, in Piedmont, can fetch €2.3 million. A ratio of 1 to 450, within a single European wine market, between two plots that both produce wine grapes.

Yet the question most investors ask is simpler: is France expensive? To answer it, we have gathered the benchmark statistics on vineyard prices in the world's three largest wine-producing countries: France (Safer, 2025 market), Spain (MAPA, 2024 survey) and Italy (CREA, 2024 survey), to which we add the 17,579 vineyard sale deeds analysed by our own observatory using DVF data. A methodological point to keep in mind throughout: the data vintages differ (2025 for France, 2024 for Spain and Italy) and, above all, these three sources do not measure the same thing. We return to this in detail below, because it is one of the central points of this comparison.

Three wine giants, three very different vineyards

Together the three countries account for nearly half of world production, but their vineyards are neither the same size nor the same profile. According to the first estimates from the International Organisation of Vine and Wine for 2025, Italy produces 47.3 million hectolitres, France 35.9 Mhl and Spain 29.4 Mhl.

The ranking is reversed when looking at planted area. Spain retains the largest vineyard in the world at around 910,000 hectares, ahead of France (around 740,000 ha, down 4.4% as a result of grubbing-up) and Italy (around 726,000 ha). In other words, Spain farms 25% more vines than Italy to produce 40% less wine: its yields are low, its vineyard is largely dry-farmed (secano), and its positioning is dominated by entry-level and bulk wines.

Hence a first paradox that shapes the entire comparison: Europe's largest vineyard is also the cheapest of the three. Area does not make value.

France: a two-speed market, from €6,500/ha to over €2M/ha

The 2026 edition of the report "Le prix des terres" published by FNSAFER describes a wine-land market that is recovering in volume while deteriorating in unit value. In 2025, 10,930 transactions were recorded (+4.5%), covering 19,000 hectares for €1.65 billion (+16.3%). The market has therefore regained activity after the downturn of 2022 and 2023.

Average prices, however, are falling everywhere:

• vines under a protected designation of origin (PDO/AOP): €171,400/ha, down 2.9%;
• vines outside PDO: €12,800/ha, down 7.7%;
• vines for spirits (eaux-de-vie): €23,200/ha, down 54.5% in a single year, as a result of the collapse of the Cognac market.

These averages conceal a spectacular regional divide. Bordeaux and the South-West are slumping (Margaux loses 43%, the Médoc 29%, the South-West 28%, and generic red Bordeaux falls to €6,500/ha) while Burgundy, Champagne, the Sancerre area and the northern Rhône valley are rising. The trade press sums up the situation aptly: the 2025 market offers "pockets of growth and an ocean of declines" (Vitisphere).

Vineyard prices in France in 2025 — Source: FNSAFER, "Le prix des terres", 2026 edition.

A word on the top of the market: Burgundy's grands crus are often quoted at around €6.5 million per hectare. This value comes from brokers' estimates (2019 reference) and not from transaction statistics, since sales there are almost non-existent. It should be read as an order of magnitude, not as an observed market price.

For a detailed region-by-region reading, we have a series on vineyard prices in France, with one article per major wine region (Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Cognac, Loire Valley, Languedoc-Roussillon).

What the sale deeds say: the DVF vineyard price observatory

Safer is not the only French source. The tax authorities publish the DVF database (Demandes de valeurs foncières), which records every property sale registered by notaries, with the price, date, commune and area. It is raw, exhaustive material, but it requires cleaning before it can be used.

That is what we do for the observatory of vineyard prices in France. Our database covers 17,579 transactions of vineyard plots, from the second half of 2020 to the end of 2025. Around 1,200 transfers were excluded after cross-checking each price per hectare against the Safer references for the département concerned: sales including buildings (winery, house, farm headquarters) buried in the price, building land still classified as vines in the land registry, and peri-urban or coastal plots sold at values unrelated to production. What remains corresponds to transactions of bare vineyard land.

Vineyard prices in France, DVF sale deeds — Source: ma-propriete.fr observatory, cleaned database 2020-2025.

The result deserves a pause. The median price has remained remarkably stable, between €22,000 and €25,700/ha over six years, while the average price rose by 26%, from €163,250 to €205,441/ha. A gap of 1 to 8.5 between average and median on the same database is the signature of an extremely skewed distribution: a minority of very expensive transactions pulls the average upwards, while the lower half of the market barely moves.

Let us recall the distinction, because it is decisive here. The median is the price that splits the market into two halves: half of the hectares sold went for less, the other half for more. The average, by contrast, adds everything up and divides by the number of sales, so that a single hectare of Champagne at €1.1M offsets fifty hectares of Languedoc at €13,000. In a market as spread out as vineyard land, the median describes the market that is actually accessible, while the average describes its total value. Neither is wrong; they simply do not answer the same question.

Median vineyard price by wine region, DVF sale deeds — Source: ma-propriete.fr observatory. Change measured since 2021, the first full year of the database.

Two movements stand out strongly, and they match exactly what Safer describes. Bordeaux has lost more than half of its median land value in four years (€32,922/ha in 2021, €15,434/ha in 2025), on a sample of 1,388 transactions. Cognac has dropped by 33%, with most of the fall concentrated in 2025 alone (€46,791/ha in 2024, €28,636/ha in 2025, i.e. −39% in twelve months). Two independent sources, two different methods, the same diagnosis.

Conversely, Languedoc and the Rhône Valley show almost perfect stability over five years. Their land was already at rock bottom in 2021: it is no longer falling, for lack of room. Champagne and Burgundy, for their part, are holding their level, at around €1,000,000 and €125,000/ha respectively.

One limitation must be pointed out, and it cuts both ways. DVF only records property sales: transfers of company shares (GFV, SCEV, SCI), through which most large estates change hands, are entirely absent from the database. The top of the market is therefore under-represented. Symmetrically, Champagne accounts for 13% of DVF transactions while representing only 5% of French vineyard area, owing to highly fragmented plots and an active market: it mechanically inflates the average. One more reason to use the median as the benchmark for the everyday market.

Spain: €16,327/ha on average, but Rioja and Rías Baixas are soaring

The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA) publishes an annual Encuesta de Precios de la Tierra, a survey of land values. For 2024, viñedo de transformación (wine-grape vineyard) comes out at €16,327/ha on national average, up very slightly (+0.5%). The breakdown by farming method reveals an interesting divergence: dry-farmed vines (secano) stand at €15,358/ha while irrigated vines (regadío) reach €17,735/ha, but are down 5.7%.

This decline in regadío is not anecdotal. It affects precisely the volume-wine segment, the one that feeds bulk and entry-level wines, in other words the same segment that is collapsing in Languedoc and in generic Bordeaux. The wine consumption crisis is hitting all three countries, and it is hitting the same type of vineyard first.

Vineyard prices in Spain in 2024 — Source: MAPA, Encuesta de Precios de la Tierra, unless otherwise stated.

The tiering is clear: from La Mancha (€7,345/ha dry-farmed, the world's largest vineyard by area) to Galicia (€60,473/ha), the ratio reaches 1 to 8 in the official statistics. On the ground, it is wider still: the Spanish trade press reports transactions at €200,000/ha on the best albariño plots of Rías Baixas, driven by global demand. This last figure is a market estimate, not survey data, and should be handled with caution.

Finally, note a limitation of the source: MAPA does not publish prices by appellation. There is therefore no official statistic for Jerez or for Penedès (the cava area).

Italy: no national average, ranges from €20,000 to €2.3M/ha

Italy goes about it differently. CREA (Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura) conducts an annual survey of the land market among local experts, and publishes not average prices but value ranges by wine-growing area, for 83 areas in the 2024 edition. The vineyard index rose by around 1% over the year.

Value of Italian vineyards by area in 2024 — Source: CREA, 75th Indagine sul mercato fondiario.

There is therefore no official national average for Italy. The only overall estimate available, produced by Vinitaly and the Unione Italiana Vini in 2021, valued the Italian vineyard at around €56 billion, i.e. nearly €84,000/ha. This order of magnitude is five years old and rests on a global valuation method: it serves as a reference point, not as a transaction benchmark.

The striking fact lies elsewhere: Italy has the highest floor of the three countries. There is practically no vineyard land below €20,000/ha, including in Apulia or Sardinia, whereas France goes down to €6,500 and Spain to €5,100. This difference is largely due to the structure of Italian land ownership: highly fragmented plots, strong competition between local buyers, and a tenancy regime that leaves little land available.

Can we really compare? Four statistics, four methods

This is the most important point of this article, and the one that most published comparisons overlook. The national figures found on vineyard prices do not measure the same quantity.

Practical consequence: placing "€171,400 in France" next to "€16,327 in Spain" makes no sense. The first figure covers only French PDO vines, the second the entire Spanish vineyard, prestigious appellations and bulk vines combined.

The French case alone shows this. Three figures coexist for 2025, all accurate: €171,400/ha (Safer average for PDO vines), €205,441/ha (DVF average of all sale deeds) and €23,985/ha (DVF median of those same deeds). The first isolates a segment, the second adds up the whole market while letting Champagne weigh in fully, the third describes the ordinary transaction. There is therefore no single price for French vineyard land, but a price for each question asked.

Which French figure to compare with which foreign figure

A simple rule follows from this observation. Against the Spanish MAPA average, which covers the entire vineyard, prestigious appellations and bulk vines combined, one must certainly not place Safer's €171,400, which concerns only French PDO vines. The relevant counterpart is our DVF benchmark for the entire vineyard: a median of €23,985/ha in France, against an average of €16,327/ha in Spain, a ratio of around 1.5. The comparison remains imperfect, a median not being an average, but it divides the apparent gap by seven.

Against the Italian CREA ranges, established area by area, it is our medians by wine region that make sense. And the reading is surprising: Languedoc at €13,531/ha and the Loire Valley at €17,000/ha sit below Apulia (€20,000 to €33,000/ha) and Oltrepò Pavese (€25,000 to €38,000/ha), i.e. the cheapest areas of Italy. In the mainstream segment, France is now cheaper than Italy.

The regional comparison with Spain is more striking still. Bordeaux, whose DVF median fell to €15,434/ha in 2025, is now well below the average for La Rioja (€40,155/ha dry-farmed) and finds itself at the level of irrigated Castile-La Mancha (€14,753/ha), in other words the largest bulk-wine vineyard in the world. Five years ago, the same Bordeaux median stood at €32,922/ha, on a par with Rioja. The slump is not a market sentiment: it is measurable in the deeds.

That said, the only truly rigorous comparison is to reason by tier, matching vineyards that produce wines of comparable level.

Indicative reading by tier, in €/ha — Comparison drawn up by ma-propriete.fr from Safer 2025, DVF 2025, MAPA 2024, CREA 2024 and OIV 2025 data. The three benchmarks in the "all vineyards combined" row come from distinct methods (median of deeds, survey average, global estimate) and are comparable only as orders of magnitude.

The result is surprising: at comparable tiers, the three countries are close. The entry level sits everywhere between €5,000 and €15,000/ha, except in Italy where the floor is higher. The mid-range lies within a band of €20,000 to €200,000/ha in all three countries. The gaps only really appear at the top, where France retains a position apart with Burgundy, Champagne and the northern Rhône. Italy holds second place with Barolo, Montalcino and Alto Adige. Spain, for its part, has no documented segment above €200,000/ha.

The common law: a vineyard is worth what the bottle is worth

Behind these three markets lies a single economic mechanism. The price of vineyard land capitalises the expected profitability of production, which is itself determined by the selling price of the bottle and by the appellation rent, i.e. the value of the right to produce under a protected designation. A hectare of Barolo fetches €2.3 million because the wine it yields sells at a high price, durably, and because the plantable area is administratively capped. A hectare in Apulia or La Mancha fetches 20 to 40 times less for the opposite reason.

The corollary of this law is being borne out right now, and in all three countries simultaneously. The decline in global wine consumption hits mainstream wines first, and therefore first hits the land that produces them: Spanish regadío loses 5.7%, French non-PDO vines 7.7%, Cognac 54.5%, while the bulk vineyards of southern Italy remain flat. High-profile appellations, on the other hand, are holding or even rising. This is not a vineyard land crisis: it is a crisis of the lower half of vineyard land. Our own deed records confirm this unambiguously: the national median has not moved in six years, but Bordeaux's has halved and Cognac's has fallen by a third.

For a buyer, the consequence is direct. The national average, whatever the country, tells you nothing. The only useful reasoning starts from the appellation, the average selling price of its wine, the permitted yield and the cost of production, to reconstruct a profitability per hectare and check what the asking price implies in terms of return on investment. This is the approach we detail in our white paper on setting up a wine estate.

Conclusion

Three markets, one reading grid. France is neither expensive nor cheap in absolute terms: it holds the highest peak in Europe, a mid-range comparable to that of its neighbours, and an entry level now aligned with Spain, and even below Italy. The real lesson of this comparison is not a ranking between countries, but the scale of the gaps within each of them: from 1 to 400 in France, from 1 to 8 in the official Spanish statistics, from 1 to 100 in Italy.

The second lesson concerns the choice of figure. Depending on whether one takes Safer's PDO average, the average of our sale deeds or their median, French vineyard land is worth €171,400, €205,441 or €23,985/ha. All three values are correct and answer three different questions. For a buyer, it is the median by wine region that matters, and it tells a clear story: a national market that has stood still for six years, a Bordeaux that has lost half its value, a Cognac in free fall, a Champagne and a Burgundy that are giving nothing away.

Comparing national averages therefore amounts to adding a grand cru to a bulk vineyard. Comparing tiers, on the other hand, teaches something. And for an acquisition project, only analysis at the level of the appellation, or even the climat or the plot, counts.

Find out more

• Observatory of vineyard prices in France: median prices by département and by wine region, calculated from 17,579 DVF sale deeds from 2020 to 2025.
• Series on vineyard prices in France: one article per major wine region (Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Cognac, Loire Valley, Languedoc-Roussillon).
• Vineyard category: vineyards and wine estates currently for sale.
• White paper on setting up a wine estate.

Sources: ma-propriete.fr vineyard price observatory (cleaned DVF database, 17,579 transactions, 2020-2025); FNSAFER, "Le prix des terres", 2026 edition (2025 vineyard market); MAPA, Encuesta de Precios de la Tierra 2024; CREA, 75th Indagine sul mercato fondiario 2024; OIV, first estimates of world wine production 2025; Vitisphere, Réussir Vigne, Vinetur, La Semana Vitivinícola, I Numeri del Vino.