SMOKE taint should be recognised as bushfire damage to help winemakers cope with years of lost income, according to one of Orange's vignerons.
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Federal Labor spokesman for Agriculture Joel Fitzgibbon has been pushing for recognition in light of in bushfire impact on the Hunter Valley's vineyards this year, with as little as 10 per cent of the 2020 harvest expected to be made into wine.
Mr Fitzgibbon said Cowra and Mudgee's vineyards were also expected to take a hit, although Mudgee vignerons have said they have avoided the worst.
Smoke taint gives grapes burnt, smoky, medicinal or "dirty ash tray" characters, which are reproduced in the wines.
"The government has announced a $75,000 emergency grant for agriculture damaged by the bushfires, but smoke taint will probably be excluded from the damage criteria," he said.
De Salis Wines was one of three vineyards affected after the 2018 Mount Canobolas bushfire and co-owner Charlie Svenson said his business was unable to access support, despite a natural disaster declaration.
"It's so specific and so tight on what they allow, to be eligible for assistance, you almost have to be broke," he said.
Mr Svenson said businesses needed to prove they could not access any funds from the banks.
"There had to be nothing left in your accounts," he said.
"For our business, we have gone out of our way to build in [a contingency] to alleviate the risk of a disaster."
Nevertheless, he said the impacts were still being felt because the vineyard needed to boost production since the fires to cover the losses.
"It's more bottles, more tanks, more staff, all these things cost money," he said.
"We plan our sparkling wines seven years in advance - what we planned a year ago we won't get until 2025 or 2026 and we lost two vineyards-worth of fruit [through smoke taint]."
Mr Svenson said the wineries and vineyards now facing a bleak outlook would need support to fund future production and the government needed to sit down with industry so it could understand the impacts.
"You harvest fruit once a year - it's not like lettuce, which you pick every other week," he said.
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