Many wineries have weathered the storm of challenges, with lockdowns affecting customers numbers and Chinese export tariffs cutting sales.

However, Best's Great Western winery wine club manager Nicole Thomson said "amazing" online sales helped set them up for the summer tourist season.

"In mid-March we had to shut down our cellar doors and protect our vineyard, which meant we didn't have to shut down production," she said.

"During that time we did a lot of marketing on our website and we were very lucky, like a lot of wineries around here, our online sales were amazing.

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"We had a lot of customers who were isolated in Melbourne and in other areas where they weren't able to leave home and so our online sales were really good because people could order online and it would arrive at their door.

"When our cellar doors were shut it was our online sales that kept us going and kept us busy.

"We have always had online sales and it has always been part of the business, but when our when our cellar doors closed, it was just above and beyond what we would normally have."

Ms Thomson said as lockdowns and COVID restrictions eased in Victoria there had been a noticeable drop off in online sales, but their visitor numbers had been the highest in the last 10 years.

"Obviously, now our online sales have reduced a lot, but our cellar doors has increased beyond what we would normally see at this time of year," she said.

"Once the borders opened we received a lot of South Australian and New South Wales tourists and people from Melbourne started coming and it was the busiest I have seen it in the last 10 years.

"Probably about 80 per cent of the visitors we had recently were brand new, so its been really good to see so many people come and check the area out which is something you wouldn't normally see."

During 2020 Australia's wine industry was also affected by a Chinese export tariff imposed, but Ms Thomson said Best's Great Western winery had not been too badly affected.

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"We do export, but we don't have all our eggs in one basket," she said.

"There has certainly been some affect on most businesses, but because we weren't relying on China as our main income its not affecting us greatly, but it would certainly be better if it didn't happen.

"We are also Australian wide, so we can distribute our wine around Australia and we also export to other countries like the US, Canada, Singapore and Japan in smaller quantities."

After making the most of a tough year, Ms Thomson said the winery was ready for whatever challenges were in store for 2021.

"For the rest of the year we can't really say what is going to happen, we can't predict anything, weather wise and what's going to happen with COVID," she said.

"We can handle whatever comes our way at the moment. Its not just us, but the whole wine industry has been affected in some way with fires, flood and COVID.

"We are a resilient bunch and we just all keep going."

2020 was also the 100-year anniversary of the Thomson's ownership of the winery, which meant many events were cancelled.

But Ms Thomson said the winery is looking forward to hosting those events this year.

"We had some special events planned last year, but we haven't been able to hold them yet, hopefully this year we can," she said.

"We have lots of events planned for the whole year, which we have on our website for everyone to see."

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