Spotlight on Australia: Sparkling & Fortified Wines
We’re excited to continue the 🌍🍷 “Wines of the World Series” with a spotlight on Australia. In the recent weeks, we’ve explored key regions with resources from Wine Australia, who have generously agreed to share their content with the Berlin Wine School Community. To broaden this overview, let’s take a look at two categories that have gained international acclaim since the early days of Australia’s winemaking: sparkling and fortified wines.
🍾Australia's Sparkling Wines:
Sparkling wine production dates back to 1881, when the "Victoria Champagne Company" in Australia produced its first wine from Burgundy varieties.
In 1893, the first sparkling wine from Shiraz was made, setting Australia’s sparkling reds as a unique and popular style.
Australia’s sparkling reds are often medium to full-bodied, dry to off-dry, with medium acidity and low tannins.
In the 1980s, cool-climate sparkling wines gained global popularity, highlighting Australian regions like Yarra Valley and Tasmania. Moët & Chandon established "Domaine Chandon" in Yarra Valley to produce sparkling wine.
All production methods are used: traditional, transfer, ancestral, tank, and carbonation.
Many grape varieties are used: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier are the most common, followed by Chenin Blanc, Semillon, Riesling, Trebbiano, Muscat, Shiraz, and Merlot.
The most famous sparkling wine regions are Australia’s cool regions: Tasmania, Yarra Valley, Adelaide Hills.
Barossa, Coonawara, McLaren Vale, etc. and other warmer regions are famous for red sparkling wines.
🍷Australia's Fortified Wines:
Have a long history dating back to the 1800s when the first wineries started fortifying export wines to preserve them for long overseas trips.
Until the 1960’s fortified (and sweet) wines were Australia’s biggest, most popular and most exported category.
Types of fortified wines to remember: Apera, Australian Tawny, Rutherglen Topaque, Rutherglen Muscat, and Liqueur Muscat & Liqueur Tokay.
Typically, the wines are produced in a similar way: grapes are left on the vine to develop optimal levels of sugar concentration before being harvested, crushed, fermented, fortified, and matured in oak barrels, sometimes using the solera system known from Spain.
Apera is a name introduced in 2011 for Australian Sherry. The most popular style is dry, oxidatively aged with nutty, complex flavours.
Australian Tawny is a style similar to Port wines. It is usually made from red varieties such as Shiraz, Grenache, Mataro, and Touriga.
Rutherglen Topaque is made from Muscadelle grapes, it’s rich and complex, yet traditionally lighter and finer than Rutherglen Muscat, with flavours of candied fruit, honey and toffee, and a distinctive cold-tea character.
Rutherglen Muscat is made from Muscat a Petits Grains Rouge and has its own classification, tracking the wine development in richness, complexity and intensity of flavour (see below).
Liquer Muscat & Tokay are counterparts of Rutherglen Muscat and Topaque, usually fortified with grape spirit and aged in small wooden casks.
Most fortified wines are produced in warmer Australian wine regions such as Rutherglen, McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley and Riverland.
🍇 Rutherglen Muscat Classification:
Rutherglen Muscat: average age of 3-5 years, lighter style - fresh and youthful with raisin flavours and subtle richness.
Classic Rutherglen Muscat: average age of 6-10 years, starts showing complex and distinctive flavour with a hint of mature wood aged characters.
Grand Rutherglen Muscat: average age of 11-19 years, greater intensity, depth of flavour and concentration, dark chocolate colour and flavours of spiced fruit, molasses and roasted hazelnuts.
Rare Rutherglen Muscat: average age of 20+ years, only bottled in small quantities, great richness and complexity and persistency.
Source: Wine Australia
🔎Did you know?
In the 1950s, Orlando winery in Barossa got inspired by the popularity of sparkling wines in Germany and invited key German winemakers to help develop similar style in Australia, resulting in “Barossa Pearl”, which became an icon of Australian sparkling wines.
In Australia, wine can have “sparkling” on the label only if CO2 comes from fermentation, not carbonation.
The most popular style of sparkling wine in Australia is brut.*
Australian sparkling wines rank high in international competitions, such as 9 gold and 9 silver medals in the 2016 Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Competition.
Winemakers with Italian roots started producing prosecco in the King Valley region in 1997. Australian prosecco quickly became popular. Unclear rules regarding the use of terms associated with Italian prosecco and it’s protected label, led to an international dispute resolved only in 2009, when also the “Prosecco grape” was renamed to Glera.
Australia’s fortified wines keep wining international competitions since the 1873 Vienna Exhibition and keep on winning about 10 to 15% awards globally since. They are sometimes called “Australia’s liquid gold”.
Seppeltsfield winery is the only one in the world to release a 100-year-old, single vintage Tawny wine each year, from 1878 to the present.
🎓Want to learn more?
Watch this 15-min video overview of Australia’s sparkling wines.
Watch this video about Tasmania’s sparkling wines.
Read the 2024 Sparkling wine market bulletin for statistics.
Read more about Rutherglen Muscat classification on the regional association website.
Download the Rutherglen factsheet on the Wine Australia website.
💬Share your thoughts!
Have you ever sampled sparkling wines from Australia? What is the taste of sparkling red wines like? Have you tried any Australian fortified wine? Can you recommend any places in Berlin to try these wines? Share your opinions!
*All resources, maps, images, and data courtesy of Wine Australia.