ROME (AP) -- Italian winemakers expect an early and small harvest this year, due to a heat wave that gripped the country in the past weeks, but the wine should be high-quality, farmers associations said Tuesday.

Vintners started harvesting as much as a month ahead of schedule, as the heat wave made grapes grow faster, Coldiretti said.

"2007 - with the hottest second half of the year of the last two centuries - will be characterized by an early and limited vintage, but a high-quality one," the association said in a statement.

The Italian Wine Union, which gathers wine producers, also said that "expectations of the quality of the next harvest are good."

The wine union said it expected production to be 5 percent down from last year's 50 million hectoliters (1.3 billion gallons). Coldiretti said the decrease could be as much as 10 percent.

Late last month, temperatures in Italy soared to over 40 degrees Celsius, including in wine-growing regions such as Sicily and Puglia. Most other cities registered temperatures in the high 30s Celsius.

Scores of fires raged up and down the country, killing two people and burning hundreds of hectares (acres) of vegetation.

Last year, Italy sold US$12 billion worth of wine, including US$4.4 billion abroad, Coldiretti said.