![The Riverland wine industry is looking to the future with a 10-year blueprint steering committee meeting for the first time this month. File picture The Riverland wine industry is looking to the future with a 10-year blueprint steering committee meeting for the first time this month. File picture](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/F96xjWybVc3FcQiiSwA3u6/c42e3843-4067-466a-b2a6-a6297e77dc01.jpg/r0_0_3456_2592_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
THE future of the Australia's highest producing wine region is under the spotlight with a newly appointed steering committee meeting for the first time this month.
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Converging on Banrock Station, Kingston on Murray, 14 industry representatives of the Riverland Wine Industry Blueprint Steering Committee met to discuss the task of defining a pathway to recovery following unprecedented challenges facing the industry.
Members of the committee include representatives from Riverland Wine, the Department of Primary Industries and Regions, Department for Trade and Investment, Starrs Reach Vineyard, Overland Corner Viticulture & Brock Produce, Accolade Wines, Ricca Terra Wines, Wine Australia, Australian Commercial Wine Producers and Hill Smith Family Estates.
Committee chair Dennis Mutton said there was an air of constructive discussion and energy to make the make the blueprint successful during the first meeting.
"The Riverland has got great assets in terms of its capacity to grow and produce good quality wine," he said.
"There's good quality fruit, good weather, good access to water resources and land.
"All of the basic building blocks are there, it's just making sure we can put them into a good structured way forward in the best interests of the growers, the producers and the community."
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Following the meeting, Justin Ross was appointed project manager, where he will be responsible for overseeing industry engagement activities, consultation, drafting, design procurement, and the development of an implementation plan.
"By our June meeting Justin will have started doing his background work and bringing that to us," he said.
"It's a matter of getting in and getting his feet dirty though meetings with growers and everyone across the supply chain to understand how the industry can be improved for consistency and market based improvement."
One of the key issues facing the industry is marketing according to Mr Mutton.
"People are now much more concerned about environmental footprints and impacts not only in the vineyard and through the winery, but what happens to that wine when it's put on a ship is travels overseas and gets bottled," he said.
"The Riverland is the largest grape growing region in Australia, but one of the challenging things is there isn't a lot of recognition of that.
"When those grapes end up in a bottle and are sold with overseas or within Australia not a particularly large amount of them are geographically labelled as from the Riverland.
"It's really important to understand all of those things and work out how we manage and market those things hopefully more effectively than anybody else, but at least as effectively as anybody else."
Mr Mutton said it was expected the blueprint would be finalised by October this year.
"The blueprint will provide a very strong strategic map for sustainable growth and development for the region," Mr Mutton said.
"It's no small task, but it's really important.
"It will also provide a considerable amount of knowledge and information for other parts of the wine industry around South Australia and Australia.
"The challenges we are facing now might not be exactly what we're facing down the line, so there's capacity for it to be revisited and updated as time goes on."
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