⁍ With overseas holidays out of bounds, locals are hitting cellar doors like never before.

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⁍ It comes as exports to China, which buys 40% of Australia’s wine exports, have been hit by worsening diplomatic relations.

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⁍ Top Australian winemakers have reported profit slumps in the United States.

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– When Australia declared a state of emergency in mid- 2020, the country’s wine industry was reeling. The country’s top export markets, China and the US, were among the hardest hit, with Australia’s wine exports to China down 0.7% in the 12 months to June compared to the previous year, while exports to the US fell 0.4%, reports Reuters. But Australia’s wine industry isn’t the only one feeling the effects of the outbreak of coronavirus, or COVID-19, which has forced wineries to change how they do business. At Tyrrell’s Wines, for instance, the average sale has doubled in recent months, so the business has adapted its wine-tasting service to comply with social distancing rules, managing director Bruce Tyrrell tells Reuters. But it’s not all bad news for Australia’s wine industry. “We’re certainly well on the way to getting back to where we were,” the director of Petersons Wines tells Reuters, noting cellar door sales and China exports both dived during the shutdown, but now customers are “sick of being locked up so our sales are going up.”