According to Wine Business Monthly, there was a rumour flying around South Australia that 'A high profile US distributor who is very well known to Aussies ordered a massive amount of top end Barossa Shiraz. He ended up going ahead with just 10% of the order.'

There are not many 'high profile' US distributors of Oz wine, so its not to hard to have an educated guess as to who it may be. Unfortunately that is just the tip of the iceberg USA that is juggernauting its way towards the titanic Oz wine industry. The latest news is that one importer of Oz wine went from $500-700K a month in wholesale sales to $100K or so for December and January. It is likely they will have to shut the doors and they have already lost/laid-off all of the sales staff except for one rep.

Its going to get very, very ugly in the next six months. With this one distributor alone you are talking about A$2m+ that wouldn't be getting paid to wineries if they go into receivership, and they are one of the smaller importers. The impact on these wineries will hurt severely and no one  knows the knock on effects this will have on those concerned. 

TORB Copyright © Ric Einstein 2009