Australia and New Zealand wine comparisons

A couple of weeks ago I compared Australia versus New Zealand wine exports. One of the confounding factors in that comparison is, of course, the size of the two different countries. Indeed, Australia is officially a continent, as well as a country and an island, being roughly the same size as the contiguous USA, whereas New Zealand is basically a couple of smaller islands.

One obvious way to address this issue of difference in geographical scale is to compare wine-industry measurements per capita (ie. per person), which is my objective in this post.

Indeed, if we wish to look at exports, for example, then per capita wine production in each country, along with per capita wine consumption, would tell us about the actual situation regarding those exports — any difference between these figures must translate into either a need for imports or for exports, as the case may be.

As usual, the data come from the Annual Database of Global Wine Markets 1835 to 2018 (by Kym Anderson and Vicente Pinilla), tables T8 and T38, with a bit of extra data from NationMaster and Statista.

The first graph shows the per capita wine production (vertically) through time (horizontally), for both Australia (blue line) and New Zealand (pink line). Obviously, in both cases their population has grown over the years, but wine production has out-stripped that growth. Australia reached its peak wine-production level at the start of this century, and has remained there ever since. New Zealand reached that same level about 10 years later.

So, in one sense, the wine production of both countries is remarkably similar these days (although very different in total volume).

The next graph shows the per capita wine consumption over the same period of time. Once again, the two countries have arrived at a remarkably similar point over the past 15 years. However, Australia remained ahead before then, but not by much, really. There was, for some reason, a spike in Australian wine drinking during the 1980s (but not in New Zealand). Oddly, this is when I first became interested in wine, although I emphasize that I am in no way personally responsible for the peak — instead, this was when Australians first started to realize the high quality of most of their bottled wines, a mass of cheap bulk wine notwithstanding.

So, it seems that the all too obvious rivalry between these two countries has resulted in convergence to a common social situation. It is not just the spoken accents that indicate a connection between the two locations! [They are also often partners vinously; eg. Wine tourism; Trans-Tasman project aims to stop viral pathogens in their tracks.]

This leads us to the final point, about wine imports versus exports. The final graph shows the calculation of per person production minus consumption through time — the area above the horizontal dashed line indicates excess production available for export, while below the line indicates a need for imports.

As you can see, Australia has always produced more wine than it has consumed, although it was a close-run thing until the 1920s. In the 1980s, when consumption had a spike (as noted above), consumption was also close to production.

New Zealand, on the other hand, has only had an obvious excess of wine production over consumption since early this century. Until 1970, production was slightly less than consumption, followed by 30 years where things varied quite a lot from year to year. However, things have consolidated since then into a consistent export market, matching or exceeding the Australian situation.

As I noted in my previous post, the wine exported is very different between these two countries. Indeed, in the USA, sales of the infamous Yellow Tail seem to be almost as large, by volume, as all New Zealand wine put together. This has not done Australia any good, in terms of the image of its wines, in spite of the diversity actually available (see Why Australia’s latest wines are making waves ; We shouldn’t be talking about Australian Cabernet anymore). On the other hand, being perceived as a land of Sauvignon blanc has not done the New Zealanders any good, either (Is Marlborough really the Sauvignon blanc capital of the world?) — market demand seems to have created this perception, not the actual range of wine types actually available in NZ. (Note that the Yellow Tail comment above is an exaggeration, as New Zealand wine imports to the USA have exceeded those from Australia for the past 5 years.)

So, high-tail it down to your local liquor store / bottle shop / off license, and check out the diversity of what is on offer from these two countries. You will not regret it, either in terms of quality or value — there are warm climates and cool climates in both countries, to match any vinous taste that you may have (ie. it is more than just Shiraz and Sauvignon blanc). Much of the beer is not too bad, either.