Through the One Grape & Wine Sector Plan, the Australian grape and wine sector identified the oversupply of red wine and red wine grapes as the single most urgent challenge requiring urgent support and action. The Plan identified a need for a National Vineyard Register to provide insights into the national supply base, capturing key data on plantings to support better decision-making. 

The grape and wine sector needs these insights to guide growers and winemakers in making informed planting decisions and help them to better meet market needs and help balance supply and demand. 

The data collected may also support other industry priorities including biosecurity, sustainability, compliance with legislated requirements, adoption of agricultural technology, bushfire response, land management, climate change adaptation and other growth strategies for the sector.

The National Vineyard Register (NVR) will be register or database of all grapevine plantings in Australia. 

It will be a comprehensive, accurate and timely picture of Australia’s vineyard plantings and will be an important resource that will assist in balancing supply and demand and supporting industry initiatives.

The NVR will be:

• An asset register: containing information about the location and variety composition of vineyards in Australia, and changes in these over time
• Geospatial:  so that the sector has options to use it for other purposes over time such as proximity threat alerts, analysis of vineyard performance in relation to other spatial information (e.g. weather, soil type, elevation) and confirmation of GI claims.
• Digital: so that the register has the potential to streamline reporting and data entry by linking to other systems via common identifiers.

We are designing the National Vineyard Register with industry to securely collect and store planting data at the individual vineyard level. Co-designing the Register will also help provide robust, data-driven insights that growers, wine businesses and the wider sector can be confident in using.

The platform for collecting the planting information will be launched in late 2026, after which growers will be able to enter their data. It is expected to take at least 12 months before all the plantings in Australia are recorded in the register.

The core data will include grape variety, area, location and bearing vs non-bearing. Additional information (optional) will include year planted, clone and rootstock. Ownership details will be recorded but kept confidential and not published.

The register will be kept secure using best practice data security protocols. It will comply with the National Farmers’ Federation’s Farm Data Code. All users will require a secure login to access the register, which will be restricted to Australian vineyard owners and operators, regional associations and levy-paying Australian wineries.

Growers will be able to use the NVR to help understand what vines are planted in Australia and make decisions about their own vineyards. They will also be able to use the register as a place to store information on their vineyards, produce maps for contractors etc. and analyse trends in yield. Further benefits include ensuring that vineyard locations are taken into account by government departments doing hazard reduction burn-offs, biosecurity alerts and planning, and spatial threat notifications.

In 2023-24, as part of the One Grape & Wine Sector Plan consultation process, the Australian grape and wine sector identified the oversupply of red wine and red wine grapes as the single most urgent challenge requiring urgent support and action. Through this consultation, a need was identified for a framework for a National Vineyard Register to provide insights into the national supply base, capturing key data on plantings to support better decision-making.

In March 2024, federal, state and territory agriculture ministers established the Viticulture and Wine Sector Working Group comprising of representatives of the Commonwealth, state and territory governments, Wine Australia, Australian Grape & Wine and other relevant groups. It was tasked with developing a national approach to address the red wine oversupply and acute issues being faced by the sector, and support future balance and profitability returning to the sector.

The Working Group put forward six recommendations, one of which was to provide data and insights for better informed decision making. There were two actions related to that recommendation; one was to “establish a national vineyard register, including future forecasting based on nursery data” to be led by Wine Australia and the Australian Government.

This led to the establishment of the National Vineyard Register project, funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) as part of its Grape and Wine Sector Long-term Viability Support Package. DAFF appointed Wine Australia to deliver the project on its behalf, including building the National Vineyard Register platform.

The project

The project started in mid-2024 with an extensive consultation process to collect the views of industry on what data the register should collect, how it should be collected and how it should be managed and funded in the long term.

Incorporating the feedback from industry, a detailed framework was submitted to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (who are providing funding for the National Vineyard Register) at the end of August. This framework outlined the data model, functional and non-functional requirements, estimated costs for building and maintaining the register, and a strategy for the collection of data.

A Request for Proposal to build the National Vineyard Register was released in late October 2025. Volunteers from the sector are also being sought to provide input into the design of the platform.

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry is funding this project as part of its $3.5 million Grape and Wine Sector Long-term Viability Support Package to support the Australian grape and wine sector to reach long term sustainability through new initiatives to assist growers and producers.

We are designing the National Vineyard Register with industry to securely collect and store planting data at the individual vineyard level.

Co-designing the Register will also help provide robust, data-driven insights that growers, wine businesses and the wider sector can be confident in using.

Industry has been involved throughout the project, including consultation prior to the build and sector volunteers providing input during the design. 

We welcome your comments and questions at any time. Please contact market.insights@wineaustralia.com