China made the decision last week to impose tariffs of up to 212 per cent on Australian wine imports after accusing the Australian government of 'dumping' their market.

But those impacted by the tariffs say it comes as a retaliation to the Australian government calling for investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wagga's Borambola Wines owner Tim McMullen said whatever the motivation is behind the decision, it will "dramatically hurt" many of the region's businesses.

"China is such a big market we've all come to depend on, there's nothing else like it in the world," he said.

"You can't just send it elsewhere at the flick of a switch."

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Mr McMullen said he feared it was too late to make amends, and that backup planning needed to begin to decide where his wine - currently sitting at a port in Shanghai - would end up.

"Australia has poked the bear, and the Chinese really know how to drive a point home," he said.

"We can't just turn the ships around either and bring it all back to Australia, it won't help us or our customers in China."

One potential option is to seek out other international markets, according to Mr McMullen.

"It is a consideration, to find a new market, and there's us and another 500 containers or more all trying to make that same decision," he said.

"We might start looking into contacts in neighbouring areas, potentially like Taiwan, and then just see where we go from there."

Unfortunately, Mr McMullen said, the seriousness of the countries' disagreement was greater than first thought.

"We were really hoping this would be short lived, but it seems it's blown quite far out of proportion," he said.