A GRAPE glut has provided a happy return for wine lovers in Australia who can now buy their favourite tipple for less than the cost of bottled water.
While a billion litres of unsold wine languishes in storage across the country and wine makers watch their share prices fall, Australians are buying good quality wines at bargain-basement rates, even below the price of mineral water.
Record grape harvests for the past three years have swamped storage cellars with unsold wine. The amount of wine now held in tanks is the equivalent of the entire industry’s annual export output.
In the mid-1990s Australian wine makers embarked on a massive vine planting programme as they attempted to catch up with worldwide demand for wines.
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But some believe that overplanting has tipped the balance too far, and above average yields for the past three years have drowned the industry.
Wine makers are moving quality wines at cheap prices by selling them in unlabelled bottles, known as “clean skins”, a term originally applied to unbranded livestock.
The BWS off-licence chain offered a six-bottle pack of 2006 unwooded Chardonnay for $A11.93 dollars (£4.83) last week, and quickly sold out.
The cleanskin bottles came from Mildura, a famous wine-growing region in Victoria which boasts big names like Lindemans and Deakin Estate The Dan Murphy’s superstore chain, owned by Woolworths, is offering a 2005 Cabernet Merlot for A$1.95 (80p) a bottle.
Bottled water sells for around A$3 a litre.
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More than 100,000 tonnes of grapes — about 5 per cent of Australia’s crop — were left unpicked in the last harvest by growers frustrated by rock-bottom prices.
The value of vineyards has also fallen by between 20 and 50 per cent in some areas, compared with seven years ago.
The wine capital of Australia is the Barossa Valley in South Australia. Surprisingly, it is also one of the cheapest regions to buy into.
Home to the likes of Penfolds, Wolf Blass, Orlando, Seppelt and Yalumba — as well as a strong Lutheran influence — the Barossa has four-hectare properties, with vines and a house, on the market for A$600,000 (£242,000).
Mike Bogan, of the LJ Hooker estate agency, said that the grape glut was having a big impact on prices.
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“There are quite a few [properties] on the market . . . but the inquiry level is low where there’s vines involved,” Mr Bogan added.