By Andy Young
The State of Australian Wine report published by Wine Australia has highlighted the results of the wine production, inventory and domestic sales survey of 2015.
The report asked wineries around Australia to complete a survey, with the results showing an increase in total wine production and in the value of domestic sales.
Wine Australia manager of market insights, Peter Bailey, said: “This is the second year we’ve conducted this survey and we estimate that we were able to collect data on 84 per cent of Australian wine production and 82 per cent of domestic sales.
“I thank everyone who took the time to participate in the survey. This information is invaluable for the sector to better understand the current state of play for Australian wine.”
The survey showed that total wine production in Australia, up to the end of June 2015, increased by 0.4 per cent to 1.19 billion litres over the previous 12 months. Within that production scale the production of carbonated sparkling wine increased by 44.6 per cent and white wine production grew by 2.7 per cent to over 550 million litres.
The production of red wine remained stable at around 580 million litres, while the production of rosé surprisingly fell by 22.7 per cent to just over 13.3 million litres.
The value of domestic sales did provide good news for wineries, increasing by 3.8 per cent to nearly $2.78 billion. This increase came despite a volume decline of nearly 0.6 per cent to 456 million litres, highlighting that the premiumisation trend is alive and well in the wine sector.
Within the overall increase of domestic sales value, red and rosé grew by 7.8 per cent, fortifieds increased by 4.1 per cent and white wine increased by two per cent. There was a slight (1.5 per cent) fall in value of domestic sparkling sales.
There was also positive news for Australian wine exports with the value increasing by five per cent to $1.89 billion in the 12 months up to 30 June 2015.