“It’s going to take us two, three, four years to really start building up the Australian side of it again because we are not going to go back to where we were,” Chief Executive Officer of Treasury Wine Estates Tim Ford made the comments at an Australia-China Relations Institute event in Sydney.

"Our brand awareness in China has gone up in the last two years on Penfolds," he said.

The biggest lesson learnt from the situation was that Treasury should have invested more in the local Chinese wine industry earlier, he said on Tuesday.

It was most likely tariffs would be dropped, although they could also be reduced, he said.

"This isn't going to be a big tap that gets turned on overnight for us.   We don't have incremental wine sitting there ready to go at the A$100 above," he said.

"The A$30 level we would be able to start supplying to China pretty quickly, but it is going to take us two, three, four years to start building up the Australian supply," he added.

Many Australian wine growers had exited the industry, while in China, the luxury wine segment had shrunk, he said.

Treasury will not get back to China being a third of profit in the next six years without diverting wine from the other markets it had built to replace Chinese sales - "which we are not going to do", he said.

In February, Treasury said net profit for the first half through December jumped by nearly three-quarters to A$188.2 million ($131.51 million) from the same period a year earlier, but below analysts' estimate.