News

Wine Australia will launch an always-on, 24/7 virtual platform called Australian Wine Connect this March to bring the global wine community together to experience and explore Australia’s thrilling wine scene.

Wine Australia’s free, comprehensive education program Australian Wine Discovered (AWD) has been refreshed and 25 topics are now available online with additional resources, updated commentary and advanced notes.

The value of Australian wine exports continued to grow in the 12 months to 31 March 2020, but Wine Australia reports that the full impact of COVID-19 on exports is still to come.

Total wine sales exceeded production for the second year in a row, indicating a tightening of supply and contributing to increased value for the sector, according to Wine Australia’s Wine Production Sales and Inventory report 2019 released today. 

Exceptional growth in demand for Australian fine wine saw the total value of Australian wine exports grow by 3 per cent to $2.91 billion in the 12 months to December 2019.

In last week’s bulletin, we examined South Korea, a wine market ranked as the second most attractive in the world, according to the Global Compass 2020 published by Wine Intelligence. This week we delve into another growing market, Poland.

In a reversal of recent trends, in 2019–20 Europe became the growth centre for Australian wine exports. The destination market behind this growth is Australian wine’s number one export market by volume – the United Kingdom.

Europe is an important destination for the Australian wine category. In the 12 months ended May 2020, 330 million litres valued at $600 million free on board (FOB) was exported to Europe. More than 100 million litres of Australian wine valued at $230 million was shipped to European destinations outside of the United Kingdom.

COVID-19 has seen rapid introduction of measures to protect the health and wellbeing of communities and it is natural that the way that we operate our businesses in this environment has changed. This week, our Market Bulletin takes a look at the changes to Australia’s top wine export market by volume – the United Kingdom (UK).

More Australian wine is exported to Europe than to any other continent. In 2018, almost 40 million cases of Australian wine were shipped to Europe compared with 26 million cases to North America and 24 million cases to Asia.