Australia's Dry Threatens Wine Drought
Date: 06-Sep-07
Country: AUSTRALIA
Author: Rob Taylor
John Casella heads the country's biggest family winery,
based 600 km from the coast in the farming town of Yenda, the
"enda the earth" jokes Viticultural Manager Kelly Drysdale.
The booming business dispatches 40 containers of wine to
the world every day, turning over A$300 million (US$244 million)
a year, mostly on the back of exports to the United States.
But Casella fears the halcyon days may be past as Australia
endures the worst drought in decades and with the spectre of
climate change and a hot summer ahead.
"If we don't get rain the budget end of Australian wine
will disappear and it will be replaced by budget imported
wines, casks, cheap sparklings," he told Reuters in his modest
office facing towering wine storage tanks.
"I would say if it does dry significantly, I'd say we will
lose two-thirds of our exports."
Casella's budget Yellow Tail tops the US import market.
More than 8 million cases made their way to America in 2006, up
7.3 percent and commanding a healthy slice of the 73 million
cases imported in the United States.
Australia's wine industry is one of the country's export
successes, with sales to China and the US pushing exports
worth around A$3.007 billion and 805 million litres in the year
to July, according to the Australian Wine and Brandy
Corporation.
The country's high-tech approach to harvesting and wine
manufacture, backed by aggressive marketing and soft-drinking
styles has led the global push by so-called New World makers.
The United Kingdom remains the most lucrative market, with
A$974 million in sales, ahead of the United States (A$972
million), Canada (A$273 million) and New Zealand (A$102
million).
But Casella says grape shortages and severe price increases
lie ahead without urgent rain to end a drought that has lasted
years in Australia's interior and is intensifying.
"It will be very damaging to a lot of Australian brands
because you're coupling that with an 80c dollar for the US
market and all of a sudden wine is having to change several
price points and the competitors move in," he said.
CLIMATE CRISIS
Australia's top science organisation, the CSIRO, has
predicted global warming will force wholesale change on
Australia's A$4.8 billion wine industry, threatening the very
existence of some varieties as temperatures soar.
"With earlier harvest in a warmer climate, the temperature
of the ripening period in some regions will become too warm to
produce balanced wines from some or maybe all grape varieties
growing there now," lead researcher Leanne Webb said.
Temperatures in most Australian wine regions are projected
to rise by up to 1.7 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) by
2030.
That in turn, Webb said, would reduce grape quality in some
regions by 12 to 57 percent, with the temperamental Pinot Noir
and Sauvignon Blanc grape varieties, as well as some Chardonnay
varieties, almost disappearing from the mainland.
The harvest-time temperature in the current cool-climate
Coonawarra region of South Australia, which grows some of
Australia's best known reds, would rise from 13C to 19C on
average by 2050.
"They're predicting a lot of things and you really can't go
out and change things on the basis of predictions," Casella
says.
"You can change grape varieties in a timespan of three
years if we have to, so we'll look at things then. It's hard to
predict how the vines will react to the higher temperatures."
Drysdale, a talkative, energetic 36-year-old, says the
industry may cope by reducing croploads, or encouraging grapes
to ripen earlier or find more heat-tolerant varieties.
She constantly patrols the vineyards and grower farms,
guiding Indian contract workers as they prune back vines, and
planning expansion along a line of wooded hills in the
distance.
Wine and Brandy Corporation's chief
