A great start to the year
How to beat the 'recession blues' ... drink plenty of cheap red wine.
Cheap Wine!
From ABC Online:
Wine industry experts are forecasting a gloomy year ahead, with supply significantly outweighing demand.
Despite ongoing drought and severe water shortages, vineyards continue to return bumper crops.
Stephen Strachan from the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia says production levels will be up again this year, creating a wine glut.
Comment:
Low interest rates, cheaper petrol and now … cheap wine. If this is a recession then bring it on!
Wally says: I'm taking y'all to VCAT, Woolies. Go on, git! Git out of 'my town'.
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Grape growing in the North East is one of the few industries that provides ongoing casual labour to the locals and the itinerant workforce. Cheap wine is one of those situations that can have many adverse ramifications.
Cheap wine reduces the profit to the winery and the vineyard. That leads to minimalist contract labour and job losses. Oh well, that means no holidays in Bright this year.
I think that as the recession bites and the jobs are lost, there will be some great opportunities for building ‘community’ in our small towns as we pull together to help out where we can.
As we take on the reality of a recession, we will find that some adjustments to our lifestyle may be in order. How we react is where the opportunities will be
Greg, it seems to me that we’re nearly always having wine ‘gluts’ due to over production, not due to any recessions. I think a lot of this is spin put out by the bigger wine companies in order to keep the prices paid to growers down, but it’s also obvious that there are too many small, unviable vineyards started up by people who just thought growing grapes and producing a little wine would be a trendy sort of lifestyle.
I seriously doubt that any job losses at wineries would have any impact on tourism in Bright or anywhere else. Intinerant workers are not generally part of the tourist market. As for the impacts of the ‘financial crisis’ in general, it remains to be seen whether regional tourism will be greatly affected. Already I notice that the older retiree market has all but dried up, but families and other sectors are still spending.