Wineries already reporting full tanks

It was another challenging season for growers as wet weather heavily impacted vines with downy mildew taking hold in almost every vineyard in the area and causing many growers to lose part, if not all, of their crop.

Riverina Winegrape Growers CEO, Jeremy Cass, said the region picked about 207,000 tonnes, down from 317,000t last year and 350,000t in 2021.

"We're down about 40 per cent on what we can produce here which is a very significant figure," he said.

"We were lucky it dried off in December and January, so we were able to get in and get what was there."

Mr Cass said most wineries indicated the whites and early reds were pretty good.

"The late reds after the bit of rain that started to come in March because the cold weather pushed everything backwards were pretty ordinary coming in," he said.

"It's a tough market out there at the moment."

Despite at the start of the season wineries saying they would not take grapes for concentrate, Mr Cass said some did but nowhere near the extent they took last year.

"That was really just to help growers out a little bit when things started to go pear shaped when we got that rain in March," he said.

Mr Cass said harvest was pushed into May with the rain and cool weather but this was looking better the upcoming season.

"One of the promising things is El Nino has come back into the equation so that may give us a bit of a spot of relief as far as inputs go, especially fungicides, and that relates to labour and also diesel as well so that may help and take a little bit of the pressure off," he said.

However even if growing conditions improve, early talks with wineries have shown the outlook for next season was not going to improve.

What started with Chinese tariffs, compounded by COVID and supply chain issues among other things, resulted in a wine glut pushing down grape prices.

"Most wineries are reporting that their tanks are still full and going forward next year is going to be just as much a challenge as it was this year," Mr Cass said.

"We have heard of growers talking to wineries at the moment who have been told they will be capped at four tonnes/acre at a price of about $200/t so that's only going to give you a return of about $800 an acre, which is way below the cost of production.

"That's for red varieties - white varieties will fair a bit better but it's not a very pretty picture out there."

Mr Cass said even if China came back to the table it won't be an instant fix and would take time to ramp up again.

"At the end of the day we've lost market share in our absence to South America and South African countries. It's not going to be the silver bullet that fixes it but it will help," he said.

Nericon winegrape grower Bruno Altin was one of the growers affected by downy mildew.

He did lose some grapes but said they were happy with the tonnage picked, however financially were down at least 30pc with having to spend more on spraying and other inputs.

Mr Altin said next season was looking worse with cost of inputs.

"Freight has come down a bit but inflation has gone stupid," he said.

Mr Altin said while fertiliser had come back, it was still double what it was two years ago.