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Australia Wines
The following piece was written by James Halliday for the Australian Wine Export Council's, Premium Wine Regions of Australia, publication.

James Halliday has written or co-authored 30 books on wine, and has been contributor to others - notably the Oxford Companion to Wine and the Larousse Encyclopaedia of Wine. He has consulted to several retailers and selling organisations. In addition to writing awards, he received the Maurice O'Shea Award in 1995 for outstanding contribution to the Australian wine industry. The most prestigious award of its kind, previous winners including Len Evans, Max Schubert and David Wynn.

With a land mass similar to that of the United States, and the distance between the Swan and Hunter Valleys the same as that between Madrid and Stockholm, it might seem inevitable that Australia should have an unsurpassed range of high quality viticultural regions. But mass alone is only part of the answer: Australia's southern half happens to lie within correct latitudes for grapegrowing, and the oceans which surround the country provide the temperature control absent in the continental climates of countries such as China and much of Russia. Add the impact of elevation from mountain systems such as the Great Dividing Range, and the full diversity of site climate becomes apparent.

This diversity can also be measured by the commencement and conclusion of harvest dates. The shortest day of the year is June 22, the longest December 22. Thus it can be seen that to arrive at the equivalent harvest dates for France or northern Europe, one simply adds six months. That said, harvest begins in late January in the Swan Valley, early February in the Hunter Valley, late February in the Barossa Valley, late March in the Yarra Valley, finishing in Tasmania and the coolest parts of southern Victoria in mid to late May. In northern hemisphere terms, this is equivalent to a harvest season running from late July through to late November.

Small wonder then, that Australia produces every known wine style from delicate sparkling wines through to exceptionally complex, rich and sweet fortified wines which can spend decades, sometimes 100 years, in cask before being bottled. It has developed these styles during 175 years of continuous grape growing and winemaking in all states, but with the principal focus on New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia - although in a curious twist of history, Tasmania was the second state to commence viticulture (after New South Wales), Western Australia the third.

In a society which prides itself on being multicultural, it is appropriate that there should have been a strong ethnic contribution to the development of the industry. Thus grape growing in the Barossa Valley was largely initiated by Silesians escaping religious persecution in the 1830's and 1840's from what is now part of Germany; the Yarra Valley and Geelong (the pre-eminent regions in one of the major winegrowing states, Victoria) by the Swiss who came in conjunction with the Swiss-born wife of the first Governor of Victoria, Charles La Trobe; the Swan Valley has always had and retains a strong influence from the Dalmatians who emigrated from part of what became Yugoslavia around the turn of the century (and who were central in the development of New Zealand's wine industry in the same period); while the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and parts of the Riverlands reflect a pronounced Italian input from two waves of immigration, one between the two world wars, the other after the Second World War.

Post Second World War immigration had a broader impact on the industry, as it was one of the most important single factors in causing a fundamental change in Australia's lifestyle, and in particular in its appreciation and consumption of food and wine. From a mixed production of both table and fortified wine in the nineteenth century, Australia had progressively moved to the production of fortified wine in the twentieth century, and table wine had only a tenuous presence in day-to-day life. As late as 1955/1960, 90% of all wine made was fortified; today it only accounts for 8%, a share which is continuing to slowly decline, while table wine consumption has permeated every walk of life.

While it thrived throughout the period from 1850 to 1950, the industry of the 1990's bears no resemblance to that of 1950. The type of wine made has changed out of all recognition; the technology used to make it has been transformed; and the impact of new grape varieties and new (or reborn) wine regions has been equally important. Yet there are elements of continuity which can be argued to be equally influential.

First and foremost is a backbone of research and tertiary teaching institutions dating back to 1892 and to the appointment of Professor AJ Perkins to what was then Roseworthy Agricultural College (and is now part of the University of Adelaide). The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) was not formally constituted until 1955, but its origins go back to 1934 when John Fornachon was appointed to the Australian Wine Board to investigate the causes of bacterial spoilage in fortified wine then being exported to the United Kingdom. That appointment (and of the same John Fornachon as first director of the Institute) was symbolic of the remarkable fusion between the AWRI (and the other research institutions including the CSIRO and the Waite Institute) and the wine industry: while pure research has not been ignored, most of the work has had direct and immediate application and benefit for commercial grapegrowing and winemaking, with excellent communication between winemakers and researchers. Those links have now been formalised with coherent planning and direction of research at all levels.

Much less tangible but no less important is what might be described as the Australian attitude, and which crosses the boundaries between the technically qualified and those who have learnt how to grow grapes and make wine without formal training. The effective output of all who work in the industry is reflected in the so-called Flying Winemakers, generally young Australian winemakers who have taken their practical skills and attitudes to all the corners of the wine world. They have succeeded brilliantly in New World and Old World countries alike, in the largest wineries and in the smallest, with good grapes and bad, equipment new and old.

This export of know-how was largely fortuitous, stemming in the first instance from the travel lust and insatiable curiosity of the typical young Australian. The growth in wine exports, which have increased from 8.7 million litres in 1985 to 130 million litres in mid 1996, and are projected to rise to 480 million litres by 2010 and to 600 million litres by 2025, has been the result of a very deliberate and highly successful strategy by an ever-increasing number of Australia's 900 plus wineries. And while this growth has been and will continue to be spectacular, Australia was in fact significant in both the nineteenth century and in the intervening years this century: in the latter period it exported more wine to the United Kingdom than did France.