SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 26, 2026 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — In just three years, a global effort to document the world’s oldest vineyards has reached a major milestone. The Old Vine Registry, the world’s leading public database dedicated to historic vineyards, announced today that it has surpassed 10,000 registered vineyards worldwide, achieving a goal originally set for 2027 more than a year ahead of schedule.
Image caption: The Old Vine Registry.
Launched in 2023 as a crowdsourced effort to identify and document living vineyards older than 35 years, the registry now spans 42 countries, representing more than 40,900 hectares of historic plantings and 1,144 grape varieties.
The project was created with a simple premise: we cannot protect what we do not first identify.
“Old vineyards are among the wine world’s most valuable agricultural and cultural assets,” said Alder Yarrow, Architect and Manager of the Old Vine Registry. “But until recently there has been no global effort to systematically document where they are, what they contain, and how old they are. The registry exists to change that.”
The initiative aligns closely with the goals of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), which in October 2024 adopted Resolution OIV-VITI 703-2024, formally defining “old vines” as those 35 years or older and recommending that wine regions promote the cataloguing of historic vineyards.
“When we launched the registry, I thought there might be tens of thousands of old-vine vineyards worth cataloguing around the world,” Yarrow said. “As the data has come in, it’s become clear that the real number may be in the hundreds of thousands. Reaching 10,000 vineyards this quickly shows how much momentum there is across the global wine community to document and celebrate these historic plantings.”
The registry has grown rapidly through contributions from growers, researchers, importers, and regional wine organizations around the world. Importers including Skurnik Wines, Becky Wasserman & Co., and Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant have helped document historic vineyards within their portfolios, while regional bodies such as Wines of Moldova, the Armenian Wine and Vine Foundation, and the Empordà Denomination of Origin have contributed data from their regions.
Beyond documenting vineyards, the project aims to raise awareness of their value and encourage their preservation.
“When vineyards are identified and documented, they become visible,” Yarrow said. “And when something becomes visible, it becomes something people value, celebrate, and ultimately protect.”
The 10,000th vineyard recently added was Beaumont Wine Estate’s Hope Vineyard, in the Bot River region of South Africa, planted to Chenin Blanc in 1974. With this milestone now reached, the Old Vine Registry is inviting growers, regions, and researchers worldwide to continue contributing vineyards to the database. New targets for vineyard counts remain to be set.
“We want every region with historic vineyards to be represented,” Yarrow said. “The more we document these places, the stronger the case becomes for preserving them.”
The registry can be explored, and vineyards submitted, at https://www.oldvineregistry.org/.
About the Old Vine Registry:
The Old Vine Registry is the world’s first and largest database cataloguing vineyards aged more than 35 years of age around the world. The registry aims to be a resource for the wine industry, academia, and consumers to discover and learn about old vineyards, as well as a conduit for the sale of wines made from these vineyards.
Originally started by Jancis Robinson, the Registry launched as a crowd-sourced, public resource on the web in June of 2023, funded by a donation from Jackson Family Wines and managed by Alder Yarrow of Vinography.Com. The site is owned by The Old Vine Conference, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to building a credible category for old vine wines and a community that sustains and communicates its value.
As of 2026, the registry includes more than 10,000 vineyards across 42 countries, representing over 40,900 hectares of historic plantings.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Alder Yarrow, Architect & Manager,
The Old Vine Registry
oldvineregistry@gmail.com
+1-415-730-3209
NEWS SOURCE: The Old Vine Registry
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