Wolf Blass, 89, says he’s been through “three or four” economic cycles in the wine industry since setting up his eponymous brand in 1966, but this downturn is bringing “diabolical trouble”.

A wine oversupply, which will take two years to soak up, has put extra pressure on brands in the “commercial” end of the sector that sell below $10 per bottle. At the same time, drinkers are increasingly moving to higher-priced wines and drinking less of them, while inflation in production costs and energy bills has eaten into razor-thin margins for wine groups at the cheaper end, which are more reliant on big retail chains to sell their product.