The Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation (AWBC) has announced that net Australian vine plantings in 2001 were down to 1% of the country’s existing bearing area, against 16% in 1998, when 14,000 net hectares (an expression that takes vine removal into account) were planted. This is provided, of course, that the statistics are accurate, something the wine industry has had trouble achieving over the last decade or so. However, there’s little doubt from official circles that unless more vines are planted in Australia, a fruit shortage is very likely to be the rate-limiting step on export sales around 4-6 years time. ‘The next decade is likely to see wider disparity between wineries sharing in the growth opportunity and those that are not’, says the AWBC in a frankly worded statement that suggests that a number of Australian wine companies have reached the peak of their size and production. My suggestion for this is that limited distribution opportunities favour a smaller, not larger number of large producers.
