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After California’s drought resulted in wildfires causing up to $1 billion damage, a drought in Australia has had an even more horrific result: booze prices are skyrocketing.

This news comes on the heels of Australia’s home-turf defeat to a German wine in the 2007 Canberra International Riesling Challenge. The German wine from the Franconian region east of Frankfurt was judged world’s best.

The Australian drought, the worst in a century, has annihilated the 2008 vintage in the country’s £1.3 billion wine export industry. A reduction in production numbers is likely to result in an increase in prices.

Winemakers will probably produce between 800,000 and 1.3 million tons for the 2008 vintage. Normal seasons produce around 1.9 million tons, according to the Wine Grape Growers and Winemakers’ Federation of Australia.

Global warming is thought to threaten the very existence of some species of wine grapes. Grapes for wine are very sensitive to temperature, and temperatures in wine regions are projected to rise by up to 1.7 C° by the year 2030, potentially destroying winemaking in much of Australia.

Source: Reuters

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