South Australia
The country's most important wine region, South Australia produces some60 per cent of all Australian wines. These encompass all styles, rangingfrom cask-wine, through maceration carbonique products, to medium- and top-qualitypremium 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 certainBarton Hack, who planted vines at Launceston in lower North Adelaide in1837. In the following year a George Stevenson established a vineyard inNorth Adelaide. However Hack's vines were removed in 1840, in order to makeway for urbanization, starting an incessant trend. Virtually all of Adelaide'smetropolitan vineyards have since been uprooted in the name of the city'screeping concrete progress, leaving part of just one, Penfold's historicMagill. This vineyard highlights the variety of the state's output as itoriginated Australia's greatest and most expensive wine, Grange Hermitage,whilst around it the cheapest and least heard-of cask-wines are made. FromSouth Australia's seemingly bottomless vat comes also the most blatant (butlegal) abuse of classic European names such as "Burgundy", "Claret"and "Chablis".