This report revises, updates and greatly expands a 1998 booklet by Robert Osmond and Kym Anderson, Trends and Cycles in the Australian Wine Industry, 1850 to 2000, which was published by the University of Adelaide's Centre for International Economic Studies. The earlier booklet was written when the nation's wine industry was expanding very rapidly. Its aim was to improve our understanding of prospects for the industry into the 21st century by bringing a long historical perspective to the current export-oriented boom in the industry. Those authors were grateful for helpful comments from numerous people in the industry, especially Brian Croser, Peter Hallier, Peter Hayes, Lawrie Stanford, Stephen Strachan and Ian Sutton, and for financial assistance from the Winemakers Federation of Australia (WFA), the South Australian Government, and the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation (GWRDC, now part of AGWA, the Australian Grape and Wine Authority).

One reason for revisiting, expanding and updating these data is because that recent growth spurt — the fifth in the industry's history — has come to an end. There is now value in more fully evaluating the latest boom-bust cycle in the light of the four earlier cycles. The other main reason for the present volume is in response to the industry wishing to improve its profitability through differentiating its product. Two major approached to differentiation in an ever more competitive environment domestically and abroad are by region and by winegrape variety, hence new sections of data pertinent to those two options have been added.

On regional aspects, the data are now differentiated by State (or, before the Australian Federation was formed in 1901, by Colony). As well, for recent years they are also presented for as many regions within States as the available data permit. This updates an earlier report prepared for GWRDC, WFA and the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation (AWBC, subsequently Wine Australia and now part of AGWA) by Kym Anderson, Signe Nelgen, Ernesto Valenzuela and Glyn Wittwer, The Economic Contributions and Characteristics of Grapes and Wine in Australia's Wine Regions, circulated as Wine Economics Research Centre Working Paper 0110, February 2010. The authors of that report gratefully acknowledged helpful comments from Leanne Webb of CSIRO, Jim Fortune of GWRDC and members of the research project's Industry Reference Group.