Over the past 15 years the University of Adelaide has provided numerous editions of a global statistical compendium of annual time series data and various key indicators of national markets for grape wines. The eighth version was published by the University of Adelaide Press in 2011 as a paperback and ebook (www.adelaide.edu.au/press/titles/global-wine) and the data are freely available at the University's Wine Economics Research Centre (www.adelaide.edu.au/wine-econ/databases). However, very little of the data in that compendium relate to the grapes that are the key ingredient in winemaking. Nor are data included by wine region within each of the countries covered. One reason is space: that compendium is already 500 pages long, so subdividing each country's area and production data into regions would have turned the volume into a brick. Also, the readily available annual data for grapes do not distinguish winegrapes from grapes for fresh consumption or drying. The more-detailed data sets that focus specifically on winegrape area data by region and variety are far less frequently published in most countries.

Another reason for that compendium including little information on winegrapes is that the relatively scant data on bearing area (and the even scanter data on winegrape production, yield and price) refer to varieties that have different names in different countries – and sometimes in different regions within countries – even though they may have the same DNA.