Despite challenges in past years between tumultuous weather and unfavourable export conditions, excitement and optimism is building as growers prepare for their busiest time of the year.

Riverina’s multi-million dollar wine industry, which is second largest wine producing region in Australia, is gearing up for a good year and the 2016 harvest is set to be good for both growers and wineries.

That is what grape grower and Chairman of the Riverina Wine Grape Marketing Board Bruno Brombal is predicting.

"The way the weather is shaping up we are going to have good fruit and a great harvest this year, while we are looking at being two or three weeks behind, it is looking fantastic for harvest," Mr Brombal said.

Despite the late harvest, Mr Brombal said no serious setbacks are foreseen and harvest remains on track for an average season, a welcomed relief after a number of tough years for growers.

“It’s going back to being an average year, going back a few years ago the harvest never started until the end of January so it is going back to what it was five or ten years ago," Mr Brombal said.

"It's running a couple of weeks late but it is not a huge concern unless it starts starts raining in January like previous years.”

Late rain during the weeks leading up to harvest can have a damaging impact on the fruit and promote Botrytis bunch rot, sour rot, Powdery mildew and ​Downy mildew.

While this year’s prolonged wet winter caused heartache for a number of industries including cotton growers, Mr Brombal said the wet winter and current weather conditions is seeing the fruit “shoot off the vines” in recent weeks.

Mr Brombul said driving farmer confidence, and adding to what is set to be a good harvest, is the export market due to the Australian dollar dropping and grape prices set to increase.

"The industry is changing for the better, the export market is increasing and supply and demand is becoming balanced,” Mr Brombul said.

“We are hearing prices are going to start going up this year and the Australian dollar dropped away last year and it helped the wine export market and it is helping us grape growers.”

Between 2015 to July this year  Australian wine exports grew to $2.11 billion.

The Vintage Report 2016 showed the average price paid for wine grapes grew by more than 12 per cent to $526 per tonne across Australia, the highest  since 2009.

The average price paid for red wine grapes increased 13 per cent to $651 per tonne and white wine grapes grew 12 per cent to $398.

“That’s what is keeping a lot of farmers going, they haven't had good prices to look forward to in a few years," Mr Brombul said.

“We need to have prices going up otherwise we are not sustainable and we will be working at a loss,”

Riverina produces 15 per cent of of the total Australian grape production and is the largest NSW wine region.