Over a quarter of Australia’s wines are made in the Swan Valley area, the vast production is due to the superb growing conditions in the southwest of Australia. The exceptional even temperatures during the growing season and the lack of rain during ripening, make great wines. There are over two hundred wineries in the Swan Valley region with the outstanding vintages being Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Semillon.
The Adelaide Hills is very fertile and produces some of the finest quality produce in the whole region. The region’s wine tradition is heavily influenced by French viticulture techniques. The wines produced in Adelaide Hills are elegant, cool climate type wines. They have great finesse and the classic wines from the region are Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The sparkling wines are classy, and again of excellent quality.
Benefitting from a Mediterranean climate, McLaren Vale is renowned for excellent Shiraz and is responsible for producing some of the best and most premium Cabernet and Genache in Australia. The McLaren Vale hugs nearly thirty kilometers of stunning coastline, and the region is also famous for its local produce. It is a gastronomic delight and the cellar doors offer the best food and drink the McLaren Vale has to offer.
The oldest wine producing area in Australia is the Hunter Valley, and is one of the largest river valleys in NSW. The region is home to over eighty wineries, and the iconic wine that is produced in the Hunter Valley is Semillon. The Hunter Valley offers great wine tours as there are more cellar doors to visit than any other region in Australia. There are plenty of new and upcoming wineries and winemakers producing some excellent boutique wines for the connoisseurs.
The Barossa Valley has a superb climate for making wine, it has hot dry summers with moderate and cool winters. The whole valley is quite small, just over twenty five kilometers long but surprisingly it produces over twenty percent of the total Australian wine output. You may be forgiven in thinking you are in Europe as the Barossa Valley has a distinctively German feel, with small Bavarian towns and a Germanic legacy dating back to the mid 1800’s.
