Just one generation ago, a few visionary leaders were optimistic that more investment funds could be attracted to expand the Australian wine industry. They developed a strategy that attracted even more funds than they had hoped for, and as a result, Australia led and showed the way for New World wine exporters to ride the globalization wave and transform many of the world's wine markets.

Then a perfect storm of shocks hit the Australian industry: a multi-year drought with severe consequences for the cost of irrigation water, the global financial crisis that began in 2008, a dramatic mining-induced appreciation of the Australian dollar, rapid wine export expansion by competitor countries, and an austerity dictate in late 2012 by a new Chinese Government. This coincidence of shocks brought to a sudden halt what had been the fifth boom since the 1840s in Australia's wine industry development.

In contrast to its recent rapid rise, the Australian wine industry was slow to emerge in the first globalization wave in the latter decades of the 19th century despite plenty of suitable land, and was somewhat laggard at the tail end of that wave which ended when World War I broke out.

In the belief that much can be learnt from an evidence-based study of both the early and the more recent history of the development of this industry, the present volume provides an analytical narrative of the long-run trends in its production, consumption and trade, and of the fluctuations around them. Many histories have been written in the past, but none have had access to the comprehensive set of data that has been assembled for this volume.

A great deal of economic and statistical analysis of these newly compiled data has yet to be undertaken. However, since the industry is about to launch into a new phase of strategic planning, this compendium and the associated database (at www.adelaide.edu.au/wineecon/ databases/winehistory) are being made freely available now to assist that process.

In this Executive Summary, key findings are briefly summarized below. They are not in order of importance but just in the order in which they emerge in the Chapters that follow.