Flood of cask wine coming to fill gaps

A surge in imported wine is expected to help meet a shortage at the cheaper end of the Australian market, following this year’s small wine-grape harvest.

Australians cannot be pleased. If they want to buy a bottle of cheap wine, they will soon have to grab a bottle of plonk from Europe. Increased imports, anticipated from Argentina, Chile, South Africa and Spain and possibly from southern France, are required this year to allow the Australian wine industry to use its scarce resources for higher-end value uses, including bottled wine exports.

Drought, frost, bush-fires and unseasonable rains reduced Australia’s wine grape harvest to 1.34 million tonnes – 29 percent below last year – and yields, expressed as tonnes/hectare harvested, were at a 30 year low, according to the April harvest report of the Australian Wine & Brandy Corporation. Winemakers are now expected to produce about 400 million litres less this year – the equivalent to the estimated ‘glut’ of the last two years. The AWBC figures represent 85 percent of the national crush. The lower yields, however, are expected to produce wines of a very good quality.