Australia's hottest summer on record is hitting its $4.4 billion wine indus...
SYDNEY - Australia’s hottest summer on record is hitting its $4.4 billion wine industry hard, with grape yields set to drop to the lowest in years and hopes the heat could produce tastier tipples starting to shrivel like fruit on some of the nation’s vines.
Rabobank in January forecast Australia’s total grape crush would fall about 5 percent from the year before to 1.7 million tonnes, but heatwave conditions since then have industry players predicting the smallest harvest since a disease-hit 2011 crop, at around 1.6 million tonnes at best. “It was a heatwave we didn’t really need,” he said on the phone after working from dawn until the temperature nudged 39 Celsius at lunchtime. Although he noted that the quality of his surviving grapes was good.
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. “You just could not keep the water up to the vines,” said winemaker Neil McGuigan, chief executive of Australian Vintage Ltd, on a conference call after the firm announced it expects its 2019 tonnage to drop from a year ago.
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