Australian Wine Grape Output May Drop on Heat Wave, Pare Supply

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Australia’s wine grape harvest may fall after a heat wave hit southern states, likely helping to ease an oversupply in the world’s fourth-largest exporter.

The nation may gather less than 1.7 million tons of fruit in the 2009 harvest currently underway, compared with 1.8 million tons last year, Mark McKenzie, executive director of Wine Grape Growers Australia, said in a phone interview from Adelaide.

“We are very rapidly seeing what we considered as too large a crop back to a more manageable size,” he said. “We are not going to have a significant wine stock overhang that we may have expected to have after the 2009 vintage.”

Australia’s wine output exceeds sales by about 30 percent, forcing companies to write down more than A$1 billion ($631 million) in assets in 2008, winemaker Australian Vintage Ltd. said last week. Temperatures in parts of southern Australia soared above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) last week for several days amid a record hot spell.

“If we get dehydrated our weight drops, it’s the same with grapes,” Mckenzie said.

Italy is the world’s top wine exporter, followed by France, Spain and Australia, according to McKenzie.