Swan Valley braces for bumper harvest

The nation’s early-bird wine region is braced to start harvesting this week with big hopes for a bumper season as the year’s fruit and wine export prices look ripe. The value of Australian wine exports increased by 1 per cent to $2.69 per litre in 2011, according to Wine Australia figures released last week, marking the first value rise in five years. But the volume of exports was down 10 per cent, which Wine Australia attributed to production falls over recent years from 1.42 billion litres in 2005 to 1.07 in 2011, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.