If I were an Australian wine producer, I’d be extremely frustrated. On the basis of the many current Australian wines I get to taste, I know that the quality and diversity of Australian wine has never been greater, but the rest of the world pretty much ignores it.
There is one big exception to this: China. China imposed crippling import tariffs on Australian wine in November 2020 (when it was Australian wine’s most important export market by far) and lifted them at the end of March 2024 so that resumed exports of premium Australian red wine to China represented the one bright spot in Wine Australia’s report on exports for the 12 months to March 2025.
The average value of a litre of bottled Australian wine shipped to the UK in the year to March 2025 was just AU$5.54, to the US an even lower AU$4.65. But the Chinese equivalent was all of AU$23. This meant that 93% of the value of Australian wine exports in bottle was in exports to one country, China, which is surely dangerous. What if some Australian politician bad-mouths the Chinese government again? Australian wine exporters could be back to square one. And the country’s vintners need to export. Australians themselves, try as they might, consume only about half of the wine they produce.
We Brits have long been Australian wine’s biggest export market by volume, and we still are, importing almost twice as much as the US, Australia’s second-biggest export market by volume. But both the UK and US declined quite substantially in both volume and value in the year to March, as did all other major export markets except for a slight increase in the value of shipments to Canada.
If I were an Australian vigneron, I’d be especially frustrated by the lack of interest shown by the world’s biggest wine market, the United States. Last year Americans spent more than twice as much in total on wine from tiny New Zealand than on Australian wine, which they still seem to see as irredeemably cheap.
If only a few influential Americans could have joined me in the delightfully cool, spacious crypt of St James’s Church in Clerkenwell at the end of April this year to taste a selection of the184 Australian wines imported into the UK on show. It would surely have changed a few minds. (See all my tasting notes from it in Keeping faith in Australian wine.)
I scored 18 of the 61 I managed to taste at least 17 out of 20, a high mark for me, for what that’s worth. And none of them had the sort of three-digit prices that have become so common for French wines.
There were a couple of real bargains from the Australian operation, Tournon in the state of Victoria, of biodynamic pioneer M Chapoutier of the northern Rhône, and they were unusually mature too – as though they’d been forgotten in a warehouse somewhere. The Mathilda 2022 blend of white Rhône grapes Viognier and Marsanne, is only 13% alcohol and drinking beautifully now, while the 2017 (eight years old!) Shays Flat Shiraz nicely applies French polish to the Syrah of the northern Rhône grown in a relatively cool part of Victoria.
It’s no surprise that four of my favourite reds were Shiraz/Syrah, Australia’s most-planted grape. (Determinedly lighter versions tend to be labelled Syrah.) What was surprising, and would surely impress a sceptical American, was that five of my favourite reds were based on the delicate Pinot Noir grape of Burgundy: one each from the relatively cool Adelaide Hills and Tasmania and three from Victoria.
Unusually nowadays, this was a tasting with only one rosé. But the Murdoch Hill Pinot Noir 2023 from Adelaide Hills was so delicately floral, it was a rosé manqué – not for keeping perhaps but a delight. It contrasted dramatically with the Tasmanian Tolpuddle Pinot Noir 2023 that is very much made, in burgundian idiom, for keeping, and has developed quite a reputation in Australia in a relatively short time (see Ten years of Tolpuddle). None of the Victorian Pinots was a bargain, and Bass Phillip has earned such réclame over the years that even its least expensive bottling, the subtle, earthy Estate Pinot 2021, commands a high price.
Nick Farr, son of the founder of Bannockburn in Geelong, another fine Pinot producer on the Victorian coast, makes Irrewarra Pinot based on a vineyard well inland from Bannockburn, in Western Victoria. The vines were planted back in 2001 by John and Bronwynne Calvert, who run a renowned sourdough bakery in the town of Irrewarra. Irresistible, surely?
Gembrook Hill Pinot Noir 2023 meanwhile showed how well-suited the Yarra Valley outside Melbourne is to the grape, as do the many single-vineyard bottlings from Giant Steps.
Australian growers, apparently undeterred by the country’s strict plant quarantine system, have been enthusiastically planting Italian grape varieties. The likes of Luke Lambert have shown that the finicky Nebbiolo of Barolo can shine in Victoria and at the crypt tasting I was taken by a version of the Tuscan Sangiovese from Ravensworth established by the former winemaker at Clonakilla, whose Shiraz grown just outside Canberra is one of Australia’s wine classics. Of the two Clonakilla Shirazes shown in the crypt, I thought the less expensive Hilltops 2022 made from bought-in fruit was better value than the estate-grown 2023.
Another recent London tasting was devoted to Australia’s best Grenaches, of which there are many, so I skipped those shown in the crypt – although I recommended an array of these juicy reds in my 14 May tasting article.
Of the other white wines I tasted one really stood out. MMAD Vineyard in fashionable McLaren Vale south of Adelaide was founded by the team behind Shaw + Smith in the Adelaide Hills. It’s devoted mainly to Shiraz and Grenache (I loved their Blewitt Springs Shiraz 2022) but the most unusual wine was a 2023 dry white Chenin Blanc based on vines planted in 1964 and only 12.5% alcohol. I’d love to taste it alongside a fine South African counterpart. Another obvious white-wine star was a really distinctive, lightly herbal blend of 2023 white Rhône grapes Roussanne and Grenache Blanc from Thistledown, the admirable project of a Master of Wine based in Scotland.
Vintners in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney were way ahead of today’s enthusiasm for lower-alcohol wines when they established long-lived, lanolin-scented, dry white Semillon as one of Australia’s unique gifts to the wine world. Tyrrell’s is the leading producer and their seven-year-old Winemaker's Selection Vat 1 2018, only 12% alcohol, is drinking beautifully now.
Margaret River on the other side of this vast country is famous for its blends of Semillon with Sauvignon Blanc and none is more admired than the Grace Madeline blend from biodynamic Cullen. I much preferred the lively 2023 shown in the crypt to the 2022 tasted earlier.
And then of course there was my beloved Riesling. Australia has a long tradition of producing surprisingly racy, refreshing dry Rieslings, especially from the Clare and Eden Valleys in South Australia. Jeffrey Grosset is the Australian King of Riesling and his Polish Hill bottling is a markedly long-lived classic. The 2012 was in great shape when tasted last year. The latest vintage, 2024, was shown in the crypt but isn’t nearly ready. (A staunch rationalist, he was recently converted to biodynamic viticulture by his wife Stephanie Toole of Mount Horrocks wine.)
But I really liked, for current drinking, another Clare Valley Riesling, the 2023 from Ministry of Clouds, a winery based in McLaren Vale way on the other side of Adelaide. It nicely illustrates the Australian propensity to search far afield for suitable grapes. The most famous Australian wine producer Penfolds, owned by the giant Treasury Wine Estates, which recently issued a profit warning, makes extremely concentrated reds blended from vineyards all over South Australia, the sort of wine with which Australia was long associated. The world’s wine lovers need to realise there is another side to contemporary Australian wine, with fresher, arguably more approachable wines in almost infinite variety.
Alternative Australians
Whites
Tournon, Mathilda Viognier/Marsanne 2022 Victoria 13%
£14.59 All About Wine
Thistledown, Walking with Kings Roussanne/Grenache Blanc 2023 South Australia 13%
£26.95 N Y Wines
MMAD Vineyard, Blewitt Springs Chenin Blanc 2023 McLaren Vale 12.5%
£30 Hic!
Cullen, Grace Madeline Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon 2023 Margaret River 13.5%
£32.98 Alexander Hadleigh
Grosset, Polish Hill Riesling 2024 Clare Valley 12.1%
£39 London End, £39.95 Hennings, £47 Berry Bros & Rudd
Tyrrell's, Winemaker's Selection Vat 1 2018 Hunter Valley 12%
£49 Vinvm, £53 Hedonism, £54.25 N Y Wines, £57 Australian Wines Online
Reds
Tournon, Shays Flat Shiraz 2017 Pyrenees 14.5%
£18.99 All About Wine, £25.50 Tanners Wine Merchants
Clonakilla Shiraz 2022 Hilltops 13.5%
£24 London End Wines, £25.45 Vinvm, £28 Shelved Wine
Thistledown Wines, Where Eagles Dare Shiraz 2021 Eden Valley 14%
£38.95 Lekker Wines, £46 House of Decant, £48.75 N Y Wines
MMAD Vineyard, Blewitt Springs Shiraz 2022 McLaren Vale 13.5%
£36 London End, £40 Shelved Wine, £44.50 N Y Wines
Irrewarra Pinot Noir 2022 Western Victoria 13.5%
£49 Hedonism; the 2021 (not tasted) is £35.59 Vinified Wine, £39 London End Wines
Gembrook Hill Pinot Noir 2023 Yarra Valley 13%
£49.50 Parched Wine
Giant Steps, Applejack Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022 Yarra Valley 13.2%
£49.70 Vinvm
Tolpuddle Vineyard, Coal River Valley Pinot Noir 2023 Tasmania 13.5%
£63 92 or More, £66 Tim Syrad Wines, £67.25 Parched
Bass Phillip, Estate Pinot Noir 2021 Gippsland 14%
£72 Baron Wines, £80.72 Bordeaux Index, £94.95 Brunswick Fine Wines & Spirits
Back to basics
| Which are Australia's classic wines? |
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There are certain classic combinations of place and grape that are more successful than most, although of course exceptions abound. Below are the most obvious examples, listed from west to east and south.
Western Australia Margaret River is famous for its Cabernet Sauvignon but also makes fine Chardonnay, Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc blends and increasingly refined Shiraz. Great Southern is good at Riesling and Shiraz.
South Australia – ‘the wine state’ The Clare Valley is famous for sleek, mainly bone-dry, Riesling. The Barossa Valley is the home of rich, concentrated Shiraz, often from very old vines. The Eden Valley is cooler than Barossa and makes fine Riesling and Shiraz. Adelaide Hills can be really quite cool and is good for Chardonnay and a range of ‘alternative varieties’ (to the famous international ones). McLaren Vale is best at Shiraz and Grenache. Coonawarra is famous for its Cabernet.
Victoria – cooler than anywhere other than Tasmania This means it can make particularly good Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, notably in the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula. Heathcote has a reputation for Shiraz.
Tasmania is cool enough to grow base wine for fizz as well as still Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
New South Wales’ most famous wine region is the Hunter Valley where Semillon and Shiraz rule. |
For tasting notes, scores and suggested drinking dates see the tasting article Keeping faith in Australian wine.
