Of all the countries in the southern hemisphere which produce wine, Australia is surely leading the pack. I mean if it wasn?t enough that they cream us in cricket, that they had to go and dominate our dining and wining scene with their bounty of Shirazes and what nots!
But don?t get me wrong, it is a very welcome invasion (and seeing how I hate cricket, I don?t mind the battering there either). Aussie wines were able to provide a good break from the Old World routine of either-highly-expensive-qualitative wines or low-priced plonk! They came and filled this very vast void with very doable and groovy wines (yep, as wine-tasters like to use technical terms like ?doable? and ?groovy? to describe wines!).
So, more seriously, for those who can pinpoint Australia on the map (or remember visiting RM Williams on their last vacation), the country is larger than your average European equivalent. The vineyards are vast and rolling, and mostly occupy the southern reaches of this island country. The chief wine regions are located in Victoria, New South Wales and then, at the other extreme end of the country, Western Australia.
Without getting into to much unnecessary details I can tell you this ? Aussies are easy fun-loving people (technical terms encore!) So, as a service to all who like to drink wine (and not just talk about it) they don?t complicate things too much like our Old World friends and hence the region does not necessarily fix the grape that can be grown there. Sure you may find a bit more of a grape in one area as opposed to another but that is not a function of law, more so of nature.
So when they make wine, they may use anything from expensive barrels to cheap oak chips as long as the wine is balanced, rounded and easy to drink. Sure some people accuse Australian wines of being too similar and over-the-top but those are the same people who find French wine complicated, Italian cheap, and Spanish, rough. So don?t worry about the posers when you feel like experimenting with Aussie wine. Given their proximity (after South Africa they are the next easiest wines to ship to India) and hence the freshness could be considered to be preserved better than say a wine which comes in like a jet-lagged frequent traveller.
They have defined regions and each makes wine in its own characteristic style. In fact, they are also managing to make wine with a regional connotation that is, a given region is famous for a given wine style or grape. This is much in line with the way the Old World makes wine. But this doesn?t mean that Australia is busy aping the French. Far from it, they are developing their own wine style. In all my travels, Australia is the only wine-producing country I have seen, which doesn?t shy away from listing the wines of other countries. They are proud to list them alongside their own and see it as healthy competition. This is a lesson that is yet to be learnt by all other wine-producing countries of the world.
All in all, Australian wines are surely doing well on the Indian palate. They have made a sizeable impact and taken in many patrons. The only concerning thing is that given how fast they are growing, it may not be long before there is a problem with either falling supplies or inflating prices. But that is quite a way bit off. So, till then we can chug back some of their super-powered, super-slick stuff and watch as they whack us out of another cricket stadium!
The writer is a sommelier