Growing markets and delivering benefit to wine producers and consumers through research and innovation — a perspective and examples from Australia

摘要

It might be true that big events erupt noisily to dominate the headlines and thrust themselves onto the world, but changes that have more impact tend to take place much more slowly and quietly. The global wine sector has been subject to steady change over the past three decades; one result is an unsustainably high disparity between global wine production and consumption. Two major factors have contributed to this development. First, there has been a dramatic decline (40-50%) in wine consumption in traditional European wine producing countries, evidently caused by societal changes. Second, the production of wine outside Europe has increased greatly and, although new markets have grown, this growth has not kept pace with that of production. The disparity between global wine production and consumption is now in the order of 50 million hectolitres. This represents about three and a half times Australia's total production and seven times Australia's total export volume. It follows that the supply/demand problems currently facing some wine producing countries cannot be put down to the export success of a few New World countries alone; it is far more complex.