Kangaroos with a taste for pinot noir grapevines have torn through a vineyard in the Canberra wine district, costing the owners more than $80,000.

The annual wine-grape harvest is now nearing completion across the region, and most farmers are hailing the overly dry seasonal conditions as ideal for growing quality fruit.

But Maipenrai Vineyard has been incredibly "unlucky".

In October 2017, as the grapevines were shooting their first leaves after dormancy, resident kangaroos quickly moved into the vineyards and nibbled the new growth — preventing buds and fruit forming.

"They got hungry," grower Jenny Gordon said.

"We had had a very, very dry winter and spring and there wasn't a lot of grass," she said.

"They have never eaten the vines before. So they got a taste … and they just munched their way through quite happily.

"Maybe they too are moving into more exotic cuisines than they have in the past."

Ms Gordon said the roos had a taste for what could have been a 5-tonne high-quality crop.

Instead the vineyard picked less than 50 kilograms from the 1.1 hectare vineyard.

"My vineyard would normally make about 4,000 bottles of wine at roughly $20 a bottle," Ms Gordon's husband Brian Schmidt said.

"That's $80,000. It is more than I would like to leave on the ground.

"It is a sad day … in that we don't get to pick in what has been a fantastic vintage."

Ms Gordon said the roos ate the new growth from the vines because of a dry winter. ( ABC News: Toby Hunt )

Ms Gordon and her husband, the Nobel prize-winning astronomer and Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University, planted their pinot noir vines 18 years ago at the beginning of the millennial drought.

"It is the first time I have ever had kangaroos eat grapes," Professor Schmidt said.

"I was surprised because kangaroos are notorious for not eating vines.

"Now that they have figured it out it would not surprise me if it happened in the future."

'Difficult situation' with no easy answer for farmers

The couple estimate 200 kangaroos call the 35-hectare property home, and that simply shooting kangaroos has proven uneconomic in their region.

"For us to shoot them you have to get tags and they will only ever give you 20 tags at a time," Ms Gordon said.

Kangaroos are not often known to eat grapes. ( ABC News: Toby Hunt )

"And there's no shooters in this part of NSW that will shoot for meat. So you have to dispose of the bodies, you have to hire an excavator to dig a large pit, you have to hire the excavator back to fill the pit in."

And Ms Gordon said the kangaroo population "had a right to survive".

"They are an important part of the ecosystem," she said.

"But what we are doing is providing them with an environment where they thrive and they breed as long as there is food and then they starve to death when there is not food.

"It is just a really difficult situation and I wish there was a magic answer, but there isn't."

Professor Schmidt and his wife created the winery to counterpoint to a consuming scientific career. ( AAP: Lukas Coch, file photo )

The couple believe their only choice is to invest in a kangaroo exclusion fencing at a height of more than 2 metres around the vineyard - which also does not come cheap.

"Probably in the order of $15,000 to $20,000," Professor Schmidt said.

"But the alternative is throwing away over $100,000 worth of capital, which is what your vineyard and your trellis and your vines are worth just to put in," Ms Gordon said.

Other vineyards in wine district impacted by roo damage

In the Yass Valley, bounding kangaroos have also damaged other grape crops by knocking hundreds of kilograms of fruit off the vines before harvesting.

"It has never happened before," grower John Leyshon said.

At Mr Leyshon's Mallaluka Wines, he estimates 150 kilograms of fruit has been damaged and dropped by the kangaroos.

Meanwhile Ms Gordon and Professor Schmidt have had time to ruminate on their "unlucky" situation.

"Maipenrai means 'she'll be right'," Ms Gordon said of the vineyard's Thai name.

"'She'll be right' means that when disaster happens you will get through it. I guess it kind of fits."

Fortunately the Maipenrai property includes a winery, meaning the couple do expect to bottle a 2018 vintage by sourcing pinot noir fruit from other vineyards.