How China is devastating Australia's billion-dollar wine industry

South Australian winemaker Jarrad White spent almost a decade building his business in China. Then, in a matter of months, it all fell apart. It had nothing to do with the quality of White's wines at his vineyard in McLaren Vale, one of South Australia's premier winegrowing regions. Instead, it was the result of months of worsening diplomatic frictions between China and Australia.

White lived in Shanghai for several years, setting up a network of distributors to sell his Jarressa Estate wine to the booming Chinese market, where demand for foreign wines among the middle class was growing fast.

By mid-2020, more than 96% of Jaressa Estate's wines were being sold to consumers in China, up to seven million bottles a year. But in November, Beijing announced crippling tariffs on Australian wine as part of an "anti-dumping investigation" into whether those wines were being sold too cheaply in China. The government said the probe was prompted by complaints from Chinese wine producers.

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