South Australia
The country's most important wine region, South Australia produces some
60 per cent of all Australian wines. These encompass all styles, ranging
from cask-wine, through maceration carbonique products, to medium- and top-quality
premium varietals, also including late-harvest and botrytis wines, "Port"
and "Sherry" types, and liqueur muscats.
beginings of the vast market garden of grapes can be traced back to a certain
Barton Hack, who planted vines at Launceston in lower North Adelaide in
1837. In the following year a George Stevenson established a vineyard in
North Adelaide. However Hack's vines were removed in 1840, in order to make
way for urbanization, starting an incessant trend. Virtually all of Adelaide's
metropolitan vineyards have since been uprooted in the name of the city's
creeping concrete progress, leaving part of just one, Penfold's historic
Magill. This vineyard highlights the variety of the state's output as it
originated Australia's greatest and most expensive wine, Grange Hermitage,
whilst around it the cheapest and least heard-of cask-wines are made. From
South Australia's seemingly bottomless vat comes also the most blatant (but
legal) abuse of classic European names such as "Burgundy", "Claret"
and "Chablis".