Just fifteen years ago, the wines of Australia were truly unknown beyond the southernmost continent. Today the picture is very different. The Australian wines have managed to make its place among the most important references of modern and innovative ways of elaboration in the New World, especially in English speaking markets. Without native vines, and the feudal nobility of the great wines of the country come to a large extent from the origins of strains imported from the rest of the world.
British settlers were the first to settle in the Barossa Valley, key factor for the prestige of Australian wines in the early nineteenth century. There, the rich English classes held off the habits of its elegant European lifestyle: fox hunting, horse riding, and of course, liked the good food and enjoyed entertaining their friends with the best wines of Bordeaux. However, the wines from the Old Continent suffered long sea voyages that could even last months. Under such circumstances, the best solution at that time was to produce their own wine and, without realizing it, the best possible legacy, for these historic sites of twisted vines still survive(never knowing the dramatic phylloxera and from them they got great wine because of their hidden flavours. Good examples of these are the wines Ederton, Great Burge, Henschke, Meter Lehmann, Rockfor, St. Hallet and the Willows.
The period from 1993 to 2003 its being consider in Australia ‘the prodigious decade of wine’. Throughout these ten years, the vineyard area operated and grape production will be doubled for the first time ever, exports exceeded the overall domestic consumption.
The Australian wine industry has gained high international prestige,thus it is possible to find Australian wines with the seal of quality almost anywhere in the world, although it still falls short for competing in terms of global production. However, the wine sector has among its objective in 2025, to become market leaders in the wine
industry, not only as the largest producers, but also the most influential and prosperous. To achieve this they have many advantages such as lack of Designation of Origin in the European way, allowing them to adapt to the market very quickly, under the sole control of their geographical areas. This is the freedom
that lets Australian winemakers mix grapes from different areas of the country, making the more purist Europeans scratch their hair, nevertheless they produce excellent results.
Low production costs and higher yields from their vines have created, along with an innovative use of technology and a simple and direct marketing that allows their labels to simply indicate the vintage, winery, region and type of grape used, have supposed a great success in countries like UK, where Australian wines are fighting France for British preference. Besides the British, U.S., Canadian, German and the Nordic countries are paying increasing attention to these wines, with insignificant presence in emerging Asian markets of China and Japan, Malaysia and Thailand, among many other countries around the world.
But despite its excellent value for money is the most prominent of its distinctions, Australia has been well known to favour the highest quality wines, resulting in the extend of high range wines, such as Penfolds Grange, a demanded wine that exceeds 300 Euros per bottle, Grange Hermitage, the symbol the worlds oldest continuous producing vineyards, Dalwhinnie, sample of the finest pinot noir in the Pyrenees, or the unmatched results obtained by the premium Rosemount Estate. For all of them, as well as famous brands such as Jacob’s Creek, Nottage Hill or Lindeman’s, is that Australian wines are so prized in the international markets and Australia has been the revelation of most wine competitions in recent years.
