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Statistics released last week indicate a 32% fall in
wine production for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007 to 978 million
liters.
A drop in production, coupled with increasing sales,
has reduced the wine surplus by 15 % to 1.8 billion liters. 'That excess
will dry up this year as even lower grape harvest is forecast for 2008,'says
Lawrie Stanford, manager of information and analysis at AWBC, the government-run
industry body
'We expect the price impact will be coming throughout
the 2008 harvest'. There will be a general trend up in price,' he said.
Of course, Lawrie is optimistic about the current year,
and hopes the harvest in 2008 will be a slight improvement over last year.
In the meantime there has been a demand shift from red
wine to white. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the red
wine grape plantations came down by 300 hAs while 800 hAs more white wine
grapes were planted last year. Earlier, after a fantastic crop of 1998
Shiraz, many new plantations of red verities had come up, eventually resulting
in glut for a few years. AWBC feels that in the near future Australia
may have to import red wine due to increase in export demand and shortage
of plantations. Due to relative free working environment unlike in Europe,
the wine industry goes through pangs of pain and pleasure cyclically.
Australia is the world's fourth-largest wine exporter.
Any increase in prices is expected to affect its export to India where
countries like Chile, Italy, Spain and even France have been increasingly
aggressive to increase their market share.
Australia exported equivalent of 155,000 cases (9 liters)
to India last year, a bulk of it in bulk wine which was bottled and sold
as Indian wine.
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