How to Find Wine Importers in Australia

There is an obvious objection to exporting wine to Australia: the country is a major producer in its own right, at every price level. That is true, and it does not close the question. A large producing country still imports the styles and appellations its own industry does not cover, and Australia buys those consistently. For a French or Italian producer, the question is not whether Australia imports wine, because it clearly does, but which part of the market has room for you and how to handle the practical frictions, which in non-EU markets your importer largely carries.

What Australia imports, and why

Australian imports concentrate in the higher-value segment rather than in everyday wine. The domestic industry covers the value and mid-market shelves thoroughly, so imported wine tends to succeed in categories the local product does not occupy: appellations and styles Australia does not produce. Champagne is the clearest example. Australia took around seven and a half million bottles in 2025, which places it among the larger Champagne markets in the world and one of the highest per capita. Fine Bordeaux and Burgundy, Italian classics and distinctive European styles account for much of the rest. The room is for wine that offers something the local industry does not, sold to an experienced audience.

Where the EU-Australia agreement stands

This is worth getting exactly right because it has been moving. For years the EU and Australia negotiated a free trade agreement, and those talks collapsed in 2023 over agricultural access and the protection of European names. They were then revived in 2025 and concluded in March 2026. The important nuance for a producer is that a concluded agreement is not yet an agreement in force. As this is written in mid-2026, the deal still has to be ratified on both sides, which can take a long time, and until it is, the existing rules apply.

In practice that means EU wine entering Australia today still pays the standard import duty, around five percent. Once the agreement enters into force, that duty is set to phase out toward zero, which improves your landed cost. But do not price your wine on a tariff that has not arrived yet. Plan on the five percent for now, and treat its eventual removal as upside rather than a number you can already bank. Either way, the tariff is the smaller of Australia's costs.

The wine tax and the labeling

The bigger cost is the Wine Equalisation Tax, the WET. It is a 29 percent tax on the wholesale value of wine, and it applies to imported wine just as it does to domestic, collected at the border. On top of that sits the 10 percent goods and services tax. The WET is a significant part of why wine is not cheap at Australian retail, and it has to be built into your pricing math from the start, because it lands on every bottle.

The other technical requirement is labeling. Australia and New Zealand run a shared food standards system, FSANZ, with specific requirements for what must appear on a wine label sold there. Both of these, the WET accounting and FSANZ label compliance, sit with your importer rather than with you. The importer is the one registered to handle the tax, clear the wine and ensure the labeling meets local rules. Your part is the wine, clean documentation and a price that absorbs the WET while leaving margin in the chain. This is the standard non-EU pattern: the compliance looks intimidating from the outside and sits almost entirely with the partner on the ground.

Who buys: concentrated retail and the independent trade

Australian packaged liquor retail is among the most concentrated in the world, and it is worth understanding before you spend effort. Two groups dominate: Endeavour, which owns Dan Murphy's and BWS, and Coles Liquor, which owns Liquorland, First Choice and Vintage Cellars. Between them they control something like seventy percent of packaged liquor retail, with Endeavour the larger. Their scale gives them considerable buying power, and a small foreign winery is unlikely to secure terms there that work, or to need them.

The other part of the market is where the work is. Australia has a strong independent trade: specialist fine-wine retailers, importers with curated portfolios and an unusually engaged sommelier culture in a restaurant sector that takes wine seriously. This is where most imported fine wine is placed, and where a small European winery with a clear identity has a realistic chance. The independent buyer and the sommelier are looking for what the large chains do not carry: character, provenance and a wine with a point of view. That is your market.

The sommelier scene, in practice

It is worth being concrete about where a small winery gets placed in Australia, because it is a specific channel: the sommelier-led on-trade and the independent fine-wine retailers who supply it and feed off it. Sommeliers here look actively for distinctive imported wine to differentiate their lists from the large retail chains. A wine poured by the glass and explained at the table builds a following that a retail listing rarely produces, and that following tends to pull independent retail along behind it. So when you assess an Australian importer, weigh their sommelier and restaurant relationships heavily, because that channel, rather than the supermarket, is where an unfamiliar European producer builds a reputation.

How to reach importers

The targeting follows the usual logic, shaped by Australia's structure. Set the large retail groups aside and aim at the specialist importers and distributors who serve the independent trade and the on-trade. Match yourself to a portfolio that already looks like yours in style, price and standing, and favor the importer who holds the sommelier and fine-wine retail relationships your wine needs. Look at who imports comparable European wine, and reach the right few directly and consistently rather than emailing the whole list.

Carry that into those conversations: once you have the right partner, the WET, the tax accounting, the labeling and the customs clearance are theirs to manage. You do not need to become an expert in Australian wine tax to sell wine in Australia. What you need is a wine with a reason to exist alongside strong domestic production, whether that reason is origin, style, appellation, price or scarcity, a price that still works after the WET, and an importer with the relationships to carry it.