Australia: Articles on Australian Wine & Wine Regions

Coonawarra, one of Australia's best-known wine regions, began as a grazing range.  Settlers who came from other parts of Australia and from Scotland bought up land in order to raise sheep.  Somewhere along the way, an enterprising farmer noticed a strip of land with paprika-red soil.  Today, that famously red earth, Coonawarra's terra rossa, is the foundation of the region's fame.

Mudgee is the third-largest wine region in the state of New South Wales, Australia.  Mudgee got its unusual name from its original residents, the Wiradjuri Aborigines, but it got its start in wine production thanks to a group of 19th-century German settlers who came to Australia with winemaking expertise.

Barossa Valley is the best-known and, arguably, most important wine region in Australia. Any discussion of top Australian wineries or innovative winemakers will inevitably include some of the top names from Barossa Valley. The region is blessed with a wide variety of soils and a long history of family winemaking. At some Barossa Valley wineries, you can go back five or six generations to the area's original German-speaking settlers, ancestors of today's growers and winemakers. Barossa Valley's unique heritage is reflected in its top-quality wines, which come not only from large, long-established wineries but also from a new generation of boutique winemakers.