As lovers of Tasmanian wine get set to enjoy the annual Wine Tasmania VIN Diemen event from today in Melbourne, with Brisbane and Sydney to come, the state’s grapes have also been recognised as the most profitable in the country.

According to the recent Winemakers’ Federation of Australia annual report, it is estimated 99 per cent of Tasmania’s grapes were ‘‘profitable’’ in the last vintage – this is while warm inland wine regions interstate are seeing wine growers and companies crippled and sell-up after years of losses.

The state recorded its largest crush last year of 7197 tonne, up 573 tonne on the year before, which equates to less than 1 per cent of that crushed nationally.

Tasmania’s continuing success and almost 100 per cent profitability was even a surprise for Wine Tasmania chief executive Sheralee Davies.

‘‘It’s a great indicator that we have a really sound, strategic approach to what we’re doing here,’’ Ms Davies said.

She described it as almost like a sales pitch to not only tourists but to the industry and encouraging greater investment in the state.

The report showed Tasmania performed significantly better than larger and long-established wine regions, such as the Barossa (57 per cent ‘‘profitable’’), McLaren Vale (49 per cent ‘‘profitable’’), Yarra Valley (36 per cent ‘‘profitable’’) and Margaret River (30 per cent ‘‘profitable’’).

Only Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula came close to Tasmania, recording an estimated 91 per cent of grapes selling for a profit.

‘‘Profitable’’ is defined by the winemakers’ federation as selling grapes for more than $300 a tonne.

Growing costs for Tasmania have been put at between $1315 and $1577 a tonne and the average yield of the past six years has been 5.8 tonnes per hectare.

Warm inland areas like Mudgee (99 per cent ‘‘loss’’), the Riverland (92 per cent ‘‘loss’’), the Hunter Valley (94 per cent ‘‘loss’’) and Murray Darling-Swan Hill (88 per cent ‘‘loss’’), are areas suffering.

Ms Davies puts the strength of the state’s wine industry down to a focus on quality over quantity from the moment it began developing its first commercial vineyards around the 1950s and always ensuring there was a market to sell to.

The state’s winemakers also stayed clear of managed investment schemes that were popular in places like Western Australia, in the 1990s and which has now resulted in a grape glut in some areas.

Ms Davies said early winemakers worked hard to get the best quality grapes from their vines and this has carried onto those in the industry today.

She said with the strength of the local industry they were very keen to grow the market and investment, and in recent years there had been a number of vineyards around the state that were investing significantly in developing their estates.

She said the mark of a good wine region was seeing investment come from large labels interstate such as Brown Brothers and Treasury Wine Estates.

Of Tasmania’s average production of about 500,000 cases (with a dozen per case) a year, maybe 250,000 to 300,000 cases would head interstate, 100,000 cases remained in the state and only 100,000 were exported.

Ms Davies said the industry was working closely with the state government to see more wine exported overseas, but there was a definite need to see greater production to try to meet the demand that already existed.

However, she said it was equally important to get more people to Tasmania, as it was the best way to introduce people to the state’s wine – and this was both a considered and collaborative approach.

‘‘I don’t think we can ever just sit back – we need to keep developing that market to make sure that demand for our wine continues to grow,’’ Ms Davies said.

Wine Grape Growers Australia executive director Lawrie Stanford said it was a mark of the strength of Tasmania’s industry that production of high price point cool climate wines, had been able to carry through the recent tough years.

Mr Stanford said despite an overproduction of Australian wine, as the country’s biggest export markets in the USA and UK continued to bounce back from the global financial crisis and the Australian dollar returned to a more export-friendly level, the future for the Tasmanian product looked even better.

He said while cheaper wine may have seen no or just a 2 to 3 per cent price increase, that for wine above $10 grew by 16 per cent, which demonstrated people were still willing to pay for a good to premium product.