And wine production rose by 27pc, according to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

For the 2008 vintage, 382 wineries around Australia crushed 50 tonnes or more of grapes, with 1.8 million tonnes of grapes crushed in 2007-08.

South Australia accounted for 31pc of all the grape crushing facilities in Australia, with the SA wineries producing 45pc of the national wine grape crush.

NSW/ACT had 23pc of the total number of wineries, with 34pc of the total wine crush, followed by Victoria (23pc of all wineries and 16pc of all grapes crushed) and Western Australia (18pc of wineries and 3.4pc of the grape crush).

The 340 winemaking businesses, in terms of crush capacity, are diverse in size and the 167 bigger winemaking businesses that each crushed more than 400 tonnes of grapes, crushed a total of 98pc of the national total of grapes.

The 14 biggest winemakers crushed more than 20,000 tonnes each and accounted for 71pc of the total crush.

Red/rosé table wine made up 54pc of the estimated wine produced in 2007-08, up from 42pc on the red/rosé table wine produced in the previous year.

But white table wine still managed an increase of 16pc on the 2006-07 output, despite losing market share to red wines.