Australian Wine - An Introduction

The Australian Wine industry is renowned globally for it’s superior quality wines at bargain prices. With an industry worth $5.5 billion, Australia is home for some of the best know brands worldwide. Australian wine is sold in more than 100 countries and the nation is the fourth largest exporter in the world.

Australian wine exports have been a success story over the past 15 years. Australian wine exports has had a phenomenal export growth with annual exports growing 100-fold from $10 million in 1990 to $1 billion in 2000. Growth has been strong at about 14% for the past five years as well. Each day, about 2.5 million bottles of Australian wine are exported infusing about $2.8 billion to the national economy.

The UK and the US remains the dominant overseas consumer base for Australian Wine. Canadians are rapidly following the UK and US as Australian wine lovers, keeping Canada firmly in third spot among Australian Wine exporting countries. Australian Wine holds the biggest share among the imported wines in the UK.

Australian Wine producing regions

Australian wine is produced in 60 different Australian wine regions across the country. Each Australian wine region has its ideal geographic and climatic conditions for the production of best quality Australian wine.

Australian Wine producing regions along with specific geographic locations producing Australian Wine are listed below:

Swan District Hastings River
Perth Hills Hunter
Peel Mudgee
Geographe Orange
Margaret River Cowra
Blackwood Valley Southern Highlands
Pemberton Shoalhaven Coast
Manjimup Hilltops
Great Southern Riverina
Perricoota
Victoria Gundagai
Tumbaraumba
Murray Darling
Swan Hill South Australia
Rutherglen
Beechworth Southern Flinders
Alpine Valleys Ranges
King Valley Barossa Valley
Glenrowan Riverland
Upper Goulburn Adelaide Plains
Strathbogie Ranges Adelaide Hills
Goulburn Valley McLaren Vale
Heathcote Kangaroo Island
Bendigo Southern Fleurieu
Macedon Ranges Currency Creek
Sunbury Langhorne Creek
Pyrenees Padthaway
Grampians Mount Benson
Henty Wrattonbully
Geelong Coonawarra Mornington Peninsula
Yarra Valley
Gippsland
South Burnett Tasmania
Granite Belt

History of Australian Wine

The origin of Australian wine production is in NSW. Wine cuttings in the state started with the first fleet in 1788, which were planted at Farm Cove on Sydney harbor. Since the area was too humid for the production of Australian wine, vineyards were established further west where the western suburbs of Sydney is today. A vineyard on the Parramatta river was the first to export Australian wine to the out side world in 1823. Though these vineyards were to prove unsuccessful later, a famous name remains - Minchinbury was an early vineyard from the same era is now commemorated on a sparkling wine. In the early days and in mid 1800's the challenge was to find a cooler region better suited for the production of Australian wine…a region, which did not receive too much rainfall in autumn during the harvest season. However, early settler’s expansion was limited by the Great Dividing Range. Camden, an area south west of Sydney was mildly successful but the best of these new areas was The Hunter Valley, which became substantially settled in the 1830's and 1840's. As a macro climate, the Hunter appears too hot and too humid to be producing premium quality Australian wine but there are sub-regions that are successful - the cooling breezes up the Hunter estuary and the accompanying cloud cover keep the region cooler and enable it to be a classic Australian Wine region for semillon, shiraz and to an extent, chardonnay.

We take pride in the Australian wine industry. We consider it a privilege that we are able to serve best Australian wine at bargain prices.

Recommended Australian Wines

Jacob's Creek
Penfold
Wolf Blass
Yellow Tail
Rosemount
Brown Bros
Lindeman
Yalumba
Leasingham