History of Australian Wine

When thinking of the production of wine, you would be forgiven for thinking that that Australia was fairly new in the industry. However, you could not be farther from the truth. When looking back through the history of Australian wine, it has been noted that the earliest settlers planted vines in Australia in 1788. Although these wine making attempts failed, it was only a few years later that the first grapes were successfully grown. In the 200 or so years since then, Australia has been growing bigger and bigger in it's wine-producing industry and is now the second largest importer of wine to the United States, Italy being the largest importer.

In the history of Australian wine, you can see that the country started exporting it's produce from an early time. It was in 1822 that the first shipment of wine traveled from near Sydney to London and the quality was recognizable, even then. That exact batch of wine that was shipped won an award for it's quality in the following year!

It was during the reign of Queen Victoria that the industry really began to set off, when gold was discovered in Melbourne in the 1840's. Currently Australia employs 16,000 people in the production of wine and also another 5,000 in selling it. In one twelve month period, it was recorded that the wine sales generated in that year was around 354 million litres and in the year after that, 250 million litres of it was exported to generate a worth of around $1.2 billion.

Due to this impressive exportation rate that grew 22% in value, and 12% in volume in a period of two years alone, it has been predicted that Australia will soon become one of the world's greatest wine producers. Not bad for a "late bloomer!" There are roughly 40 wine growing regions in Australia, the best of which are New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, and Western Australia.

In 1990 Australia put into effect the Label Integrity Program (LIP), which regulates the vintage, varietal, and geographical indications of wines produced in Australia.

If you were to ask yourself why this impressive country has grown so much in it's wine-producing industry, you would have to look at two main factors. One of these would be the great climate it has to offer to grow the grapes in, and the other being the lack of "prohibition" on the industry. The country has faced a few hard times over the years in it's wine making but has overcome these and managed to grow more impressively by the year!