Victorian wine


Victorian wine is wine made in the Australian state of Victoria. With over 600 wineries, Victoria has more wine producers than any other Australian wine-producing state but ranks third in overall wine production due to the lack of a mass bulk wine-producing area like South Australia's Riverland and New South Wales's Riverina. Viticulture has existed in Victoria since the 19th century and experienced a high point in the 1890s when the region produced more than half of all wine produced in Australia. The phylloxera epidemic that soon followed took a hard toll on the Victoria wine industry which did not fully recover till the 1950s.
Today winemaking is spread out across the state and features premier wine regions such as Heathcote, Rutherglen, Pyrenees and the Yarra Valley. Single varietal wines produced in Victoria include the Australian mainstays of Shiraz and Chardonnay as well as Cabernet, Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc with increasing plantings in the late 1990s and 2000s of Viognier, Sangiovese, Pinot noir, Pinot Gris and Nebbiolo, and even the more obscure Graciano, Lagrein and Tannat. Victorian red wines are often described as more elegant than the robust styles of South Australia, although the style of wine ranges from lighter elegant Pinot Noirs to medium and full bodied Shiraz and Cabernets. Rutherglen is renowned for its distinctive Madeira-like fortified wines such as Liqueur Muscat.

History

Some of the earliest commercial plantings in Victoria were near Yering and established by Hubert de Castella, a Swiss immigrant who came to the region in 1854. The devastation of France's vineyards by the phylloxera aphid opened up an opportunity to capture the British wine market which traditionally depended on French wine. In his 1886 treatise, John Bull's Vineyard, Castella ambitiously laid out his plans for Victoria to produce enough wine to supply all of England's needs. Unfortunately, before his grand plan could be fully realized, phylloxera made its own way to Australia and the viticultural setback was compounded with the development of the domestic temperance movement, as well as economic uncertainty and labor shortages during the first World War.
Early in Victoria's wine history, most of the wine industry was settled in the cool southern coastal regions around Melbourne and Geelong. At the turn of the 20th century, focus began to move to the warmer north-eastern zone around Rutherglen. The region began to establish a reputation for its sweet, fortified wines made from late harvest grapes that are shrivelled to near raisins and then spend several months aging in oak barrels stored inside a hot tin shed that acts like an oven. The unique nature of these Liqueur Muscat and Liqueur Tokay styles helped sustain that part of the Victoria wine industry until the country-wide wine renaissance of the 1950s & 1960s.

Wine regions

Since the 1960s, Australia's labeling laws have centered on an appellation system that distinguishes the geographic origins of the grape. Under these laws at least 85% of the grapes must be from the region that is designated on the wine label. In the late 1990s more definitive boundaries were established that divided Australia up into Geographic Indications known as zones, regions and subregions. The wine zones of Victoria are Central Victoria, North East Victoria, North West Victoria, Western Victoria, Port Phillip and Gippsland.
Gippsland is one of the newest and least developed wine regions in Victoria. Serious planting did not begin till the late 1970s. Located to the east of the Mornington Peninsula, the region is current dominated with Pinot noir and Chardonnay plantings. Sparkling wine has shown some potential here with the Chardonnay and Pinot noir grapes showing a bit of spiciness that adds complexity to the wine.

Central Victoria

The North West Victoria zone is the most similar Victorian wine region to South Australia's Riverland in that generous irrigation sources provides for high yielding production. Lindemans Bin 65 Chardonnay was first produced in this region, and it produces some of the grapes for Yellow Tail.
The geography of Western Victoria covers flat pastures and granite escarpment. With low annual rainfall, the area relies heavily on irrigation. Springtime frost is a risk factor in some of the higher altitude vineyards. The generally warm summers allow for optimal ripening of varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. Winters are normally cold and rainfall is variable with El Niño and La Niña affecting seasonal rainfall. The far southwest of the west has more of a maritime climate.
The Port Phillip zone includes the five regions clustered around Melbourne. The climate of this more closely resembles Bordeaux than in other Australia wine regions yet it is more thoroughly planted with Burgundy wine varieties like a Pinot noir and Chardonnay. Other areas are planted with Shiraz.