Guy Barnett,Minister for Primary Industries and Water
The Tasmanian Liberal Government is continuing to support our growing wine industry by delivering $100,000 in funding to support emergency smoke testing of wine grapes and improve resilience in the wine industry.
The funding, to be delivered by Wine Tasmania, will provide rebates of up to $1,000 to cover the costs of rapid testing of wine grapes that may have been affected by bushfire events.
This is in addition to the $217,680 recently announced under the Agricultural Innovation Fund to investigate the production of sparkling wine from smoke-affected wine grapes and support climate change adaptation for the Tasmanian wine industry.
The funding is matched by industry co-investment of more than $130,000, with research, development and extension (RD&E) to be undertaken by the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture.
Improving resilience in the wine sector helps to underpin Tasmania's reputation as a destination for premium wines. The State's wine sector had a stellar year in 2021 with Tasmanian wines scooping up dozens of national awards, and 2022 is shaping up to be equally successful.
Tasmanian wine is showing excellent growth, with the State's wine grape vintage up 18 per cent by volume for 2021 and the sector contributing more than $200 million to Tasmania's economy.
Building resilience and continuing the expansion in Tasmania's wine sector will be an important part of our target to sustainably grow the farm gate value of the state's agriculture to $10 billion per year by 2050.
