Australian Vintage, the struggling owner of wine brands McGuigan, Tempus Two and Nepenthe, is pursuing an emergency capital raising after larger rival Accolade Wines temporarily ended merger talks.

Australian Vintage asked for a suspension of its shares on the ASX on Monday as it outlined that debt levels were likely to be more than 50 per cent higher than expected by June 30, ballooning to between $70 million to $75 million. It had previously guided between $43 million to $50 million in an industry grappling with two years of wine oversupply.