Wine sales rise slowly

15.9 million litres of Australian produced wine worth $82.3 million was exported in February according to new Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released recently.

The volume of wine exports was up 23 per cent on January 1999 and up 3.5 per cent on a year ago.

Australians are starting to favour red and rose table wine over white table wine.

Trend estimates for the domestic sale of white wine fell 2.2 per cent from February 1998 figures.

During the same period sales of red and rose table wine grew strongly by 19.1 per cent and has increase by 48.5% from February 1996.

The United Kingdom remains our biggest single export destination receiving 47.8 per cent of our wine, although North America is also becoming increasingly important for the Australian wine industry.