There are signs that wine sales are on the road to recovery, with the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing the trend estimate for domestic sales of Australian produced wine at 36.1 million litres in August 2008, an increase of 0.5pc from July 2008.

However, the seasonally adjusted estimate for domestic sales of Australian produced wine was 34.3 million litres this month, a fall of 5.3pc on July 2008 and 2.1pc on August last year.

On the international front, exports of Australian produced wine increased by 6.6pc during August to 67.7 million litres, the ABS reports.

The value of the exported wine in August 2008 was $235.7 million.

In the 12 months to the end of August, the ABS says Australia exported 700.0 million litres, with a total value of $2.6 billion.

However, this was a fall of 12.5pc in volume and a decrease of 12.0pc in value over the corresponding period to August 2007.