The future of high-end wine labels and some Victorian wine makers are in doubt after grape growers have reported losses upwards of $2 million since the bushfires.
North-east Victoria wine maker, Rob Hawkings, who owns Indigo Vineyard at Beechworth was able to harvest just four tonnes of grapes after the fires.
Usually he would pick up to 330 tonnes annually.
While the fires burnt nowhere near Beechworth in January, smoke taint destroyed a majority of his crop with the remaining four tonnes picked purely for research purposes.
Adding to the bushfire dilemma, recent COVID-19 restrictions have forced the closures of many cellar doors with sales limited to online and phone orders.
Mr Hawkings on-sells two thirds of his grapes to wine makers and said the business had experienced a $566,000 loss in revenue through a lack of suitable grapes.
Furthermore, the unusable grapes and dip in wine sales are expected to cost his business an additional $2.1 million in 2019/20.
Grape samples analysed by the Australian Wine Research Institute examined several compounds in Indigo's grapes after the fires, and the results were concerning.
"One of the markers for the impact of smoke is a compound called syringol and a normal level would be 10 units per million, 80 would imply the impact of smoke and ours were above 500," Mr Hawkings said.
Fifty per cent of his wine is sold to restaurants - all of which have closed - while the remaining 50 per cent is mainly made through cellar door and online sales.
The company employs 11 full-time workers and producers 72,000 bottles annually across six varieties of white and red.
But Mr Hawkings feared the worst of the economic fallout was yet to come.
"Wines from Beechworth are in the super premium levels so it's a question whether people will substitute them for cheaper wines and save the more expensive wines for special occasions only," he said.
"We can't make those [cheaper] wines because here in particular is an expensive place to grow grapes and with high labour inputs, lots of hand work and low yields it makes it impossible."
But a predictive smoke taint tool being developed by Latrobe University, DELWP and the wine industry is being touted as an exciting development by wine makers.
Professor Ian Porter, who worked together with a team of scientists at Agriculture Victoria investigating the effects of smoke taint, said the tool would be released mid-2021 and help wine growers detect accurately the early risk of smoke damage during and after a bushfire.
"The tool will allow producers to identify a threshold which allows them to harvest grapes without smoke taint," Professor Porter said.
"At the moment any smoke is pierced as a problem and this will show that most smoke such as smoke from controlled burns and mild bushfires should not be a problem.
"In the disastrous bushfires this season the tool was able to identify regions that were okay and also regions where crops would be lost."
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