More than 350 million bottles of wine are gathering dust in Australian storage, and industry figures have an ingenious plan to stop them heading for the bin.
As the petrol crisis continues, Australia's peak grape body is hoping to transform wine into fuel.
The country's $51 billion wine industry is on the precipice as it faces a significant oversupply of product, with more than 350 million bottles of wine sitting in storage.
With a lot of that wine rapidly becoming unsaleable, Australian Grape and Wine chief executive says Lee McLean says distillation options are being explored to help bolster fuel stocks.
“I don't think it’s going to be a silver bullet for fuel security issues that we’ve got in this country, but it can contribute,” he told the Rural Press Club on Tuesday.
Mr McLean acknowledged there were questions that needed to be addressed around the wine distillation process, how it would be stored, and how the product would be taxed, but believed the situation could present a rare opportunity.
Biochemical fuels can be derived from alcohols and have previously been floated as a way to produce more sustainable jet fuel.
King Charles III also ran his Aston Martin on “surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process” with a fuel blend made up of 85 per cent bioethanol and 15 per cent unleaded petrol.
However, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation associate professor Karine Chenu believes there are better ways to produce biofuel.
“Wine is already used for consumption and there are other products that are waste products which could be used much more efficiently,” Dr Chenu told AAP.
Australia grows a lot of crops like sorghum or sugarcane that produce unused biomass such as leaves and stems that could instead be used for biofuel.
Ever since China imposed tariffs as high as 218 per cent on Australian wines, the domestic industry has faced significant oversupply.
Though these levies have been lifted, consumers are also drinking less.
Some wine companies have attempted to cater to changing consumer tastes by producing zero-alcohol wines, but few have been able to strip out the alcohol without also stripping out the flavour, Mr McLean said.
The sector has now called on the Federal Government to help it transition to a smaller industry by offering loans and helping offload the excess wine.
— with AAP
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