AFTER a three year freeze in trade, the Federal Government announced last month that China was lifting heavy tariffs on Australian wine, and wineries across the North East were thrilled with the news.

The Brown Family Wine Group (BFWG) was one of Australia’s biggest exporters of wine before the tariffs were imposed, having spent 20 years investing in the market.

Having evolved from a single brand - Brown Brothers - the group is now a family of brands with Healesville's Innocent Bystander falling under the Brown Family Wine Group umbrella.

BFWG winemaker and brand ambassador Katherine Brown said the winery was thrilled to have the opportunity to start the long-awaited re-entry into the popular market.

“We’ve got three staff members who are based in China and we’ve kept them on with the optimism the tariffs would be lifted at some stage so we could hit the ground running and get back into the market as soon as possible,” she said.

Beijing imposed trade sanctions on $20 billion worth of Australian export products during an unsettled trade period in 2020.

China's duties on Australian wine effectively made it unviable for Australian producers to export bottled wine to that market, which was worth $1.1 billion in 2019.

In lieu of the gaping China export market gap, Ms Brown said the winery looked to other avenues in export, including improved focus on the United States and south-east Asian markets of Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia.

“We had some growth in those markets, but certainly nothing to fulfill where China was at,” she said.

Ms Brown said BFWG chief executive officer Cameron MacFarlane had recently visited Chinese shores in preparation for re-entering the market.

“Something we’re really excited about is in the past four years we haven’t been in the market, there’s a whole group, a few million in fact, of people who are now of legal drinking age so we’re looking to tap into these new consumers,” she said.

“There’s going to be a really big Moscato and Cienna focus as we look to move our way forward into these markets.”

While the market re-entry will provide a significant reprieve to the winery’s trade, Ms Brown said the group would need to be patient before they could return to pre-tariff figures in the market.

“Preferences have changed a lot in China with a lot more of the population drinking less wine, so we need to get it back up there and essentially re-educate the Chinese consumer about Australian wine and occasions for wine drinking,” she said.

“Hopefully with a lot of work we can build things back up again, but we certainly don’t think it’s going to just be a flick of a switch and it’ll be back where it was pre-2020.”