DAN'S WINE BLOG- CHINA CHANGES

2024-04-O5

Let’s start off with the great news that China has lifted its crippling and unjustified 212% duty on Australian wine. Despite all the “rejoicing on the streets” I would suggest a considerable degree of caution. The wine sales volumes in China have been falling- if not plummeting since 2020, so that whilst our exports of wine to China will ramp up now that the tax has been lifted, the volumes will be, in my opinion, dramatically lower than pre-tax.

We used to sell them around $1 billion worth of wine a year, it plummeted down to less than $10 Million due to the tax. I would be very surprised if in the first full 12 months we sold them much over $100 million, in fact I believe that even that figure will be quite a stretch, as today China is consuming less that half the volume of wine that it was consuming in 2019, in fact the volume is down to around the same as it was in 2009. In addition, Chinese local wine production has fallen by nearly 60% in the last decade, whilst there has been a considerable improvement in the quality of their domestic wines, especially the smaller more boutique wineries in the newer regions.

So China coming back on board will not be the panacea for the Australian wine industry- it will help reduce the lake of surplus wine, but we need to keep on seeking new markets in a world that is drinking less and less wine.

On a more positive note the Netherlands has achieved a record grape harvest in 2023 despite a wet summer. Whilst still a minute wine producer, the Netherlands achieved production of some 1.7 million bottles of wine in 2023, a 30% increase on the previous year.

I first wrote about Dutch wines in an article “The Dutch Touch” in WBM Magazine’s May-June 2020 issue, as a result of a tasting organised for me by a fellow judge at the 2019 World Bulk Wine Exhibition.

It was an impressive line up of mainly white wines with a some excellent Pinot Noir waving the red wine flag. The star of the tasting was the sensational #MinZeven Bruut & Bruizned -method traditionelle sparkling wine, made from five hybrid varieties, it is a world class sparkling wine that impressed me so much that I have bought and shipped (at massive expense) a bottle here for each of the last two Christmas’.

So if you happen to travel to beautiful Amsterdam or elsewhere in the Netherlands, seek out a bottle of local wine- I am sure that you will not be disappointed by it.

Have a great week, stay safe and enjoy #emergingvarieties.

Cheers Dan T