Imagine a world without wine, yes it's a sad thought, but just think about it...

Toasts wouldn't be as fruitful - literally and figuratively speaking, your crazy relatives wouldn't boogie down as much at weddings and holidays could be unbearable (depending on your family or in-laws). Overall, it would be a dreadful situation.

As a wine enthusiast, the thought of a potential global wine shortage where vines are scarce and the wine goes bad or runs dry, is rather daunting. I have been fortunate enough to taste some of the best wines in their respective locations from Californian gems - Napa and Sonoma, to Spain's rustic Andalucía, the enchanting city of Paris (where I tasted the country's signature Bordeaux) and Italy's captivating Tuscan region - and I hope to continue to do so.

It looks like I'm not the only one savoring Mother Nature's earthly offerings and delightful bouquets, however.

The latest news heard from the grapevine is indeed a buzzkill. Wine lovers are drinking more wine than the vineyards are producing, due to a spike in popularity in the U.S. and China, which has quadrupled its wine consumption in the past five years, according to a recent report by Morgan Stanley Research.

Buyers might as well put a cork in it because top wine-making countries such as France, Spain and Italy are producing less due to land use problems, poor harvests and bad weather.

"Last year, global supply for wine already barely exceeded demand. Adjusting the demand to include non-wine uses (such as making vermouth), there was actually an undersupply of about 300 million cases, marking the largest such shortfall in almost 50 years," Quartz reports.

Australia-based analysts Tom Kierath and Crystal Wang say the shortage comes despite the fact that there are one million wine producers globally, making 2.8 billion cases each year. About half of that comes from Europe, according to CNNMoney.

Global production fell by more than five percent last year - to its lowest level since the 1960s - primarily due to bad weather in France and Argentina. Production in Europe alone dropped 10 percent in 2012, according to the report, but that didn't stop wine lovers from wanting to runneth their cups over. The same year, worldwide consumption rose by one percent.

Who drinks the most wine?

It's not far off from what most would expect - the French consume the most wine, followed by Americans, and then the Chinese.

"Wine has become particularly popular in China, as the economy booms and the standard of living there rises. China is also producing more wine," CNNMoney adds.

How much wine do Americans consume?

America consumes 12 percent of the world's wine but produces just 8 percent - and its thirst for wine needs to be increasingly quenched - consumption rose two percent last year.

On the other hand, Americans are trying to make up for their thirst by expanding the U.S. wine making industry. In the last 15 years, the number of American wineries has "expanded dramatically," the report says.  It's important to note that this growth isn't coming from major wine producers, but from "boutique" operators, meaning there isn't a real growth in overall supply.

Morgan Stanley also points out that output from newer producers like the U.S., Argentina, Chile, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa has already peaked.

The Grape Debate:

Despite these findings, there might some light at the end of the tunnel, according to the International Organization of Vine and Wine: "After five modest harvests in a row and an exceptionally weak 2012 harvest, wine production in 2013 can be qualified as relatively high." The organization expects production to climb to its highest levels in seven years.

In addition, some analysts and wine experts in California and the world are dismissing Morgan Stanley's prediction of a global wine shortage, arguing that "the industry is in fine shape and that much of the reduced production has been intentional because of a wine glut (an oversupply of wine)," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

"Analysts must have looked at the decline in Europe but didn't take into consideration that growers there were overproducing," said Rob McMillian, executive vice president of Silicon Valley Bank and founder of its wine division. "Europeans have ripped out 100,000 hectares of vines for that very reason."

For the best wines in the world, demand has always exceeded supply, the International Business Times adds.

In certain regions, such as Bordeaux and Champagne (that have larger scale production) the acreage of land under vine and the quantity of wine produced per hectare is strictly controlled in order to keep the quality high and the supply under control.

"It is crucial that even in the face of increased global demand that these quality production controls are adhered to as the brand recognition that companies have spent a long time building can easily be damaged by overproduction," IBT adds.

Is this the right time to invest in Vino?

Forbes' Contributor, Kathryn Tully, says not necessarily.

"Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that buyers are now guaranteed to make a fortune in the investment-grade wine market. After all, in the fine wine market, the tiny portion of overall global output (mostly Bordeaux) that is considered to be viable and relatively liquid investment trades on quality, not just quantity," she explained.

This can be seen in a recent report by Bloomberg that took a closer look at the Liv-ex Fine Wine 50, a London-based online wine exchange's index that tracks the 10 most recently available vintages for five elite first-growth Bordeaux. It showed a decline during two successive quarters because of poor demand for the 2012 vintage. Why? Tully says one reason could be the dealers got stuck with "a lot of the comparatively lousy 2011 vintage."

"The 2012 wine harvest may have been a particularly poor one in terms of global production, according to data from the International Organization of Vine and Wine, but that does not mean that the 2012 Bordeaux is selling very well."

Investments aside, people from all walks of life love their wine, whether it's cheap or top of the line. While the global wine shortage may be up for debate, the buzz surrounding it still leaves wine lovers fermenting in doubt. But in the meantime, it's best for all of us to just raise our glasses in the hopes for future, bountiful harvests here in the U.S and around the globe.