Wine under the weather

Grape yields tipped to fall as drought hits vines

AUSTRALIA’S hottest summer is hitting its $6.2 billion wine industry, with grape yields set to drop to the lowest in years.

As harvesting gets into full swing, forecasts show winemakers are the latest to succumb to a catastrophic drought that has already wilted the winter wheat crop and is expected to drag the wool clip to a record low.

Rabobank in January forecast Australia’s total grape crush would fall about 5 per cent from the year before to 1.7 million tonnes, but heatwave Close Change conditions since then have industry players predicting the smallest harvest since a disease-hit 2011 crop, at about 1.6 million tonnes at best.

“The general consensus is things are pretty grim,” said Greg Knight, a grower in the Barossa region in South Australia.

He began picking the season’s first pinot noir this week, about three weeks sooner than usual, after his dams dried up in January, and expects his crop to be between two-thirds the size year’s.

The weaker yield comes as top producers in Europe harvested half and of last a bumper crop in 2018. “There’s no question that (the Australian grape harvest is) going to be down,” said Perthbased wine broker Peter Briggs, who trades about 10 million litres of wine a year.

Bulk grape prices have already surged by about a fifth, he said, squeezing local winemakers who don’t run their own vineyards and who will find it very difficult to pass on price rises to customers, especially bulk buyers overseas.

“A lot of the bigger players don’t care where they get the wine from as long as they can get it at a (good) price,” he said.

The weather bureau last week said the summer just ended was its hottest since national records began in 1910, and among the 10 driest. The hot, dry weather is expected to persist through autumn.

“You just could not keep the water up to the vines (pictured),” said winemaker Neil McGuigan, chief executive of Australian Vintage, which expects its 2019 tonnage to drop.

“When you cook the fruit, they just disappear. They become raisins and they just dry up ... It’s a little upsetting when you’ve worked so hard.”

But the west coast was spared the worst of the weather. And irrigation, though expensive, has offered a cushion to some in the east.

And in a further positive sign, Australia’s largest wine exporter, Treasury Wine Estates, said there were signs that this year’s vintage would be good.