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Victoria

Introduction

More information on tourism in Victorian wine regions.

Choose Region:   Select Option Alpine Valleys Ballarat Beechworth Bendigo Central Victorian High Country Geelong Gippsland Glenrowan Goulburn Valley Grampians Heathcote Henty King Valley Macedon Ranges Mornington Peninsula Murray Darling Other Wineries of Victoria Pyrenees Rutherglen Sunbury Swan Hill Warehouse (Vic) Yarra Valley

Choose winery:   Select Option Ainsworth & Snelson Growlers Gully Rees Miller Estate

Introduction

In 1886 Hubert de Castella published a book about Victoria's vineyards, winemakers and wines glorying under the title of John Bull's Vineyard. The title reflected not only the fact that the State was then the most important wine producer in Australia, but that a substantial part of that production found its way to England.

From a tentative start in the early 1840s, the growth of viticulture quickened: that decade saw the establishment of the Melbourne Metropolitan, Yarra Valley and Geelong districts, areas which were to remain of prime importance for the next 40 years at least. The centre of Victoria followed in the wake of the discovery of gold in 1851, and viticulture soon extended over all of the centre and northeast.

It was a golden age, in which the stories of those who planted vineyards and established vines were every bit as romantic as of those who feverishly dug for gold. Gold and vines were inextricably linked, the former giving the impetus for the development of the latter. While history proved what was in any event inevitable - that easily won gold would soon be exhausted - the start of the long decline of the wine industry was triggered by an altogether different cause: the discovery of phylloxera at Fyansford, near Geelong, in 1875.

Suffice it to say that this scourge led to the immediate demise of the Geelong district and cut a swathe through central Victoria, finally reaching the northeast in 1899.

While the vignerons of this district replanted their vineyards on grafted rootstock, many others did not bother.

In 1886 Hubert de Castella railed against the production of `sweet full-bodied red, and sweet full-bodied white wines abomination of desolation' and forecast that within ten years there would be a swing back to `clean, dry wines, as light as their climate can produce'. He spoke after visiting the LW therglen Show, and of course his prophecy was not fulfilled. Heavy, fortified wines, by no means all as good as those produced in the northeast, came to dominate the Australian industry.

However, the central and southern districts of the State were totally unsuited to such wines, and as the chart [opposite] shows, the decline in production from those areas was not reversed until 50 years had passed. Federation, the removal of State duties and tariffs, and the rapid growth in the South Australian industry all combined to decisively end Victoria's dominance. What phylloxera started, fashion finished.

By the early 1960s the only wineries south of Glenrowan were Best's and Seppelt at Great Western, and Chateau Tahbilk and Osicka in the Goulburn Valley. As at the end of 1997, there were over 240 licensed wineries spread across the length and breadth of the State, and the rate of growth showed no sign of slackening.

It is exceedingly unlikely that Victoria will ever seriously challenge South Australia for the crown it lost at the end of the

1890s as the major producer in terms of volume. The quirk of history which drew the South Australian and Victorian State boundary just to the east of Coonawarra and Padthaway may also deny - and will at the least delay - a challenge on the grounds of quality, but there is no question that the importance of Victoria in the production of premium wine is growing day by day.

The northwest of Victoria houses Australia's largest (and probably most efficient) winery: Lindeman's Karadoc, which has crushed up to 45 000 tonnes in a single vintage, at the time well over 10 per cent of the Australian crush. However, there is an inexorable move away from the irrigation areas along the Murray River as non-premium and multipurpose grapes are replaced by premium grapes, the latter increasingly grown in premium areas. Thus in 1989 Sunraysia and Kerang-Swan Hill produced 86 500 tonnes of the State total of 104 000 tonnes, or 86 per cent; by 1999 they are expected to produce 199 500 tonnes out of a total of 258 000, or 77.5 per cent. Looked at from the other side of the coin, the premium area tonnage will increase threefold from 17 000 tonnes to 58 500 tonnes over the same ten?year period.

The quality areas start with the northeast, and fan out southwards, ultimately extending to Drumborg in the far southwest, and Gippsland in the far southeast. An immense diversity of wines and wine styles emerges, ranging from the luscious fortified Tokays and Muscats of the northeast through to the delicate but intense Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays from the Geelong, Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley regions around Melbourne.

One is never far from a vineyard in the arc running from Portland in the southwest up through Great Western and Bendigo

to Rutherglen, thence southeast to Lakes Entrance, then back through Geelong to Melbourne. A great deal of the countryside is beautiful, some extraordinarily beautiful - and it is constantly changing. Wine tours using Melbourne as a base can take anything from a day to a week: every winery, every district brings something new, something fresh.