Australia

Australia holds some of the oldest producing vineyards on earth. Phylloxera never reached South Australia, and quarantine has kept it out, so Barossa and Eden Valley still work ungrafted shiraz, grenache and mourvèdre planted in the 1840s to 1890s. In France almost nothing survived that period. Barossa producers use a formal Old Vine Charter with tiers at 35, 70, 100 and 125 years.

Shiraz is the same grape as French syrah, but the Australian name now marks a style as much as a variety. Barossa shiraz is dense, sweet-fruited and warm; Hunter Valley shiraz is lighter and earthier; Grampians and Canberra shiraz are cooler, peppery and closer to the northern Rhône. The country also makes the world's best-known cool-climate riesling, in Clare and Eden Valleys, bone dry with lime and a hard acid spine.

The technical base is unusual. The Australian Wine Research Institute and the universities of Adelaide and Charles Sturt shaped modern winemaking practice worldwide, particularly on oxygen management, screwcap closures and yeast selection. Australia moved to screwcap for whites and then reds ahead of everyone else, and the argument it won was about cork taint and random oxidation.

The industry's difficulty is structural. A handful of very large companies produce most of the volume, the export market is concentrated, and the 2020 to 2024 collapse in Chinese demand left large surpluses of warm-inland red grapes. The wine that repays attention is mostly from small producers in the cooler margins: Tasmania, the Adelaide Hills, Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Margaret River and Great Southern.