Chinese like Australian wine

It has cemented China's position as the fourth-largest export market for Australian wine after the United States ($586 million), the United Kingdom ($556 million) and Canada ($205 million).

China recorded the largest increase in bottled exports, up 34 per cent to 22 million litres in the 12 months.

The Chinese success was achieved among a near static export market generally for Australian wine which grew by 2 per cent to 772 million litres, but fell slightly in value to $2.10 billion for the 12 months to the end of September. Australian Wine & Brandy Corporation senior analyst Peter Bailey said the China story was the bright spot of the wine export market and regarded as a positive growth market for Australian wine.

Mr Bailey said there was still a lot of work to be done to really understand the Chinese market, but the industry was growing more confident about it. A feature of the Chinese market is the high value of $5.48 per litre for bottled exports with a total value of $122 million, while bulk wine shipments were worth $23 million.

Mr Bailey said the growth in volume was driven by an increase in bulk exports offsetting a smaller decline in bottled exports.

"The major factors that have contributed to this include adjustments to the excess supply position, shipping branded wine in bulk for packing offshore, the increased presence of buyers-own brands and the strong Australian dollar," he said.

"Products from Australia are being packaged offshore for a combination of reasons, including economic, environmental and scale rationale together with meeting the requirements of some customers."

Mr Bailey said the share of bottled wine in the export mix fell 6 percentage points to 56 per cent, while the share of of bulk wine rose to 43 per cent.

The volume of bottled wine exports fell by 8 per cent to 431 million litres valued at $1.77 billion for the year.

It included an 8 per cent drop in bottled red exports, a 10 per cent drop in bottled white wine and a 4 per cent rise in bottled sparkling wine.