Australia is making 'good progress' in reducing its wine glut and now needs to start rebuilding its reputation, a leading industry body says.
Following the release of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia’s vintage report, which estimates that the size of the 2010 Australian grape harvest has fallen to 1.53m tonnes, the Federation’s chief executive Stephen Strachan told decanter.com, ‘We are pretty pleased.
‘It shows that the industry adjustment process is well underway. While the supply issues are still there, the industry focus is rebuilding confidence. We need to build our reputation internationally. We don’t want to be the country that is on promotion most often.’
This year’s crush marks a 12% decrease on 2009 and represents a 300,000 tonne reduction compared with the 2008 vintage.
Strachan said, ‘We are not adding to the surplus and that’s got to be a good thing. We need to have another reduced intake next year, then we may be able to say we have turned the corner.’
It is estimated that 8-12,000ha of vines have been removed or abandoned in Australia in the past year.
‘We still have further to go but we never thought there would be such a large reduction in one year,’ added Strachan.
Written by Rebecca Gibb
