Sales of cheaper imported wines in Australia are slowing as the massive crops from the 1998 and 1999 vintages stake their claim on the domestic market. Although there are some concerns within sectors of the wine industry that some of the sales statistics reflect an element of double-counting, the numbers available suggest that while red wine cask sales are increasing annually by around 15-17%, sales of bottled red wine are increasing by 18-20%, with white wine bottles improving by around 8-9%. Against these figures, annual export growth of around 12% by volume in the year to June last year shows that Australian wine is still some distance from meeting latent global demand. However, unless sales of Australian red wines increase very dramatically above current growth expectations, industry-held stocks of red wine are expected to increase from 482 million litres to 958 million litres in just three years. That’s rather a lot of wine. If it’s any good, the Chileans, South Africans and Argentinians should be very, very concerned. If it’s not, the makers will pay for under-estimating the strength of their global competition. In short, their fate is in their own hands.
