Audit reveals just 8.7% of wines served in NSW government owned buildings are local

An audit of 29 restaurant and bar wine lists at venues in NSW government owned buildings has found that of 2,181 wines, just 189 or 8.7% were from NSW. Conducted by David Cumming, director of Define Wine Marketing & Communications and owner of The Lane Cellars in Orange, the audit counted every wine on each venue’s most recently published list by region and was read between July and October 2026. Venues without a publicly available list were excluded. The audit found only one venue exclusively pours NSW wine at its events — the International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC) at Darling Harbour. Cumming shared that adding the ICC’s 100 NSW wines to the total is enough to skew it majorly, making the figure rise to 289 of 2,281 wines or 12.7%. Including that one venue in the total would account for more than a third of all NSW wine counted.