Despite concerns of a glut that has hit retail prices and forced some big wineries into financial difficulty, Australia's winemakers have continued to produce big volumes of wine, with preliminary results showing another record crush of almost 2 million tonnes for the 2005 vintage.
Preliminary results released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics are now available from the 2004-05 annual wine collection which covers Australian winemakers who crushed 50 tonnes or more of grapes during the year. Results show a total of 1,451.4 million litres of beverage wine being produced in 2004-05, an increase of 1.9% on the previous year. Following the record crush from 2003-04 (1,917,238 tonnes), the 2004-05 year has produced an even larger crush, with a rise of 2.1% to 1,956,792 tonnes. An estimated 1,072,646 tonnes of red grapes were crushed in 2004-05, while 883,846 tonnes of white grapes were crushed.
Preliminary results from the Inventories of Australian Wine and Brandy collection shows that at 30 June 2005, stocks of beverage wine owned by those winemakers that crushed over 400 tonnes of grapes were 2,053.4 million litres. This represents an increase of 198.9 million litres, or 10.7%, on stocks held at 30 June 2004. Detailed results from the 2004-05 annual wine collections will be included in the publication Australian Wine and Grape Industry, 2005 (cat. no. 1329.0), which is scheduled for release on 25 January 2006.
The trend estimate for domestic sales of Australian produced wine was 35.4 million litres in September 2005, a decrease of 0.6% on August 2005 and 0.1% on September 2004.
The trend estimate for domestic sales of white table wine decreased 0.5% on August 2005 and 0.1% on September 2004. Red and rosé table wine decreased 0.7% on August 2005, but increased 1.4% on September 2004.