Charting a Course for the Australian Wine Industry: Insights from New England Australia

For a period of almost thirty years the Australian wine industry experienced rapid growth and a concurrent expansion in productive capacity, buoyed by higher prices largely attributable to increased export demand. For example, from 1990-91 to 2007-08, production expanded from 346 million litres to 1.25 billion litres per annum, with export volume increasing from 57 million litres to a little over 714 million litres in the same time period (ABS 2009). This expansion saw a marked increase in the number of domestic wineries, from approximately 600 in 1990-91 to almost 1900 in 2004-05. It also witnessed a geographic dispersion of grape growing and wine production; with the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) recently listing no fewer than 86 wine producing regions (Jackson 2009).