Tasmanian grape harvest heads for record

The Tasmanian wine industry is headed for a record harvest as the last grapes of the season are plucked from vines around the state.

Wine Tasmania CEO Sheralee Davies said the most recent harvest had been a great one overall.

“We’ve had a generally warm and dry season,” Ms Davies said.

“Temperatures have been just a little above average across the season, and that’s had a few positive impacts.

“It’s helped our yield, so we’re looking at a bumper crop this year, and most likely a record.”

Ms Davies said, so far, it appeared the harvest had produced high-quality grapes.

“The weather has also brought the harvest on just a little bit earlier. It’s been a great year in Tasmania.”

Even though yields were high, there were no concerns about an oversaturation of the wine market, with Ms Davies saying the Tasmanian wine industry was used to the variabilities of each harvest season.

“If you go back and look at our vintage results, you’ll see vineyard areas slowly and steadily increasing, but the actual volume of grapes harvested is going up and down like a yo-yo.

“It’s just life in a cool climate region like Tasmania, and people who have been growing grapes for a while understand that’s just how things go.”

Ms Davies said this year’s yield was a bit of an outlier.

“We’re actually coming out of five years of lower yields.

“We haven’t had an above-average yielding season since 2019, so we’ve actually got quite a lot of pent-up demand for Tasmanian wine that we haven’t been able to satisfy for a number of years now.

“So what this means is that we are able to satisfy that demand for starters, but we are also able to look at finding new consumers and growing new markets.”

Despite this year’s high yield, Ms Davies said that it had no bearing on future harvests.

“If we’ve learned anything growing grapes here for over 60 years, it’s that it’s never an upward trajectory; that’s just not how our wonderful cool climate works.

“It will continue to be up and down over future years.”