Grape variety plantings chartThe Australian Bureau of Statistics produces an annual
report on the Australian wine and grape industry. I rely on this report in
giving the detailed figures for the area and tonnes produced each year for the
major varieties. However, the report is in fact a hybrid: one part of it comes
from detailed questionnaires sent to all wineries crushing more than 400
tonnes, a less extensive enquiry to those crushing between 50 and
400 tonnes, and no figures are taken from wineries crushing
less than 50 tonnes. Because the scope of the questionnaire sent to the
wineries covers a great number of things, the ABS decided long ago that it was
unreasonable to ask for a breakdown of the tonnage crushed by variety.
This information comes from a quite separate questionnaire
to grapegrowers, sent out by a different department. The net result is a
substantial difference between the total tonnage provided by the grapegrowers,
and that derived from the wineries. Since the wineries pay a levy on each tonne
crushed, there is no reason to imagine that they would ever overstate their
crush. Moreover, while the total tonnage crushed by wineries crushing between
50 and 400 tonnes has been calculated by the ABS to be in the region of 34 000
tonnes, the contribution of the very small wineries would be much less than 5%
of the total. Nonetheless, it simply underpins the winery information, which in
2006 amounted to 1 901 560 tonnes. The total of that provided by the
grapegrowers (and which is reflected in the
grape variety planting chart) is 1 781 668
tonnes. (I should also add that I have consistently used the grapegrower
numbers in that table, to provide a continuing comparison on a year-by-year
basis.)
The two giants in Australian viticulture are shiraz
and chardonnay, which between them provided 46% of the total tonnage. Overall,
there has been an uneasy calm before the storm, the 2006 crop little changed
from the two preceding years, and adding to the already significant wine
surplus generated in 2005 and 2004. Nonetheless, for the first time in decades,
the hectares planted decreased, not by a large amount, perhaps, but taking them
back to where they stood in 2002. Grape production also declined slightly; both
of these decreases were the first signs of grapegrowers responding to the lack
of demand from the wineries.
As
the vintage snapshot of 2007 indicates, there will be a dramatically
different outcome for 2007, with grape production two-thirds that of 2006. The
surplus which was expected to take 3 or 4 years to come back into balance will
have virtually disappeared overnight. Because of the lag time between grape
harvest and wine sales, the immediate effect on sales may not be as dramatic as
the figures might suggest, although wineries are already reacting to the
shortfall. The days of massive clearances by cleanskin bottles, of discounts of
over 50% of the recommended retail for branded products, and exports in bulk
will all sharply diminish.