Wine

Glass Half Full for Australian Wine?

Grab a glass and pull up a chair. It’s time to talk about the persistent challenges in Australian wine... and possible pathways to renewal.

The challenges facing Australian wine make for a long and complex list but it’s one worth having a conversation about, especially around the dinner table with a glass of the good stuff in hand. We can’t ignore what is going on in the world around us, but throughout history, great wine has provided moments of escapism, reflection, human connection, creativity and joy. 

Think about it. When was the last time you sat around the dinner table with friends and loved ones? No distractions, just deep, meaningful conversation? Wine expert and industry observer Andrew Caillard MW is all for it, and sounds something of a cri de couer. 

“The wine industry hasn’t adapted and continues to promote and sell wine in the same way as it has for years,” he says. “We need to promote wine as a cultural necessity and encourage households and friendship groups to have meals together with wine, rather than scrolling and watching television while snacking.” 

Andrew Caillard, one of Australia’s foremost wine writers and historians, who argues that renewed focus on premium positioning is key to sustained success in Australian wine.

The Swartland region of South Africa is a latter-day wine cultivation success story for South Africa – and a 
potential source of inspiration for our industry locally.

CHANGING HABITS? 

After researching and penning The Australian Ark,a historical deep dive into the history of Australian wine, Caillard knows how important it is to learn from the past. 

“There have been several crises over the years,” Caillard says. “I think the worst was during the First World War with so many families devastated by loss of life. Unfortunately, there will be winners and losers with this current challenge – just as there were with the phylloxera crisis, Federation in 1901 (which made some vineyards uneconomic), the Export Bounty Act 1924 and the Second World War.” 

During the Wine Industry Impact Awards in late 2025, Brendan Carter, founder of South Australia’s Unico Zelo, Applewood Distillery and Bottle Shock wine bar, hit the crowd with some good news. Or rather, “how to find it hiding inside the bad news we’re constantly being fed,” he said.

“If you’ve read the trade press lately, you’d think Australian wine is circling the drain. China tariffs, climate change, Gen Z hates us, oversupply, consolidation… it’s enough to make you want to pour yourself a very large glass of, well, anything.”

In vino veritas, one might say. 

Brendan Carter, founder of South Australia’s Unico Zelo, Applewood Distillery and Bottle Shock wine bar.

GENERATIONAL SHIFTS 

Carter isn’t one to mince words. “The Australian wine industry does face real challenges but framing everything as a crisis creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of decline,” he says.

“The truth is simpler: markets change, consumer preferences evolve, and industries adapt or die. The Australian wine industry has adapted before – through five boom-bust cycles, through currency crashes, through drought, through tariffs. We’ll adapt again. The difference between pessimists and optimists isn’t that optimists ignore problems, it’s that optimists see problems as opportunities in work clothes.” 

But what about all the people who aren’t drinking wine? 

“Let’s unpack what’s actually happening here. Gen Z aren’t avoiding wine because they’re health nuts – they’re some of the highest consumers of recreational drugs of any demographic,” Carter says. “They’re avoiding it because they’re broke and because drinking doesn’t photograph well. When you’re broke and exhausted by superficiality, you eventually start caring about what’s real. You become more sceptical of borrowed prestige and Gen Z care about authenticity above everything else.” 

It’s food for thought. Carter goes further. 

“Post-war European immigration built our table wine industry,” Carter says. “Now, with decades of Asian immigration, our food culture has changed. The decline of heavy reds isn’t just about China’s market – it’s about what’s on Australian dinner tables. Here’s the irony: ask any sommelier what pairs best with Asian food, and they’ll say German Riesling. But Germans aren’t eating Thai takeaway on a Tuesday night. We are.” 

On the flavour front, aromatic whites, lighter styles, wines with a touch of sweetness, pair with ginger, chilli, soy, and fermented flavours in ways big Shiraz doesn’t. “Australian Riesling with Thai food isn’t just a good pairing – it’s authentic. It reflects what’s actually on our tables, in our neighbourhoods, in our lives. And the global Asian food market is one of the fastest-growing in the world. We have the chance to be the authentic pairing, made by people who actually live this reality.” 

Here’s where Carter believes Gen Z’s lack of wine indoctrination becomes its secret weapon. “The industry sees unfamiliarity as a problem. But to a generation that hasn’t been taught what matters, unfamiliarity is just... neutrality. We’re not fighting uphill against established preferences. We’re meeting them on level ground. If you think that sounds outlandish, consider this: if Gen Z don’t know Shiraz from Pinot, then we have the opportunity to introduce literally everything. Which means we can be pragmatic. We can introduce grapes that actually suit our conditions.” 

Like Tarrango, which yields 50 tonnes per hectare, tastes like Beaujolais Nouveau, uses minimal water, and needs the heat of the Riverland to ripen. “Here’s the best part,” Carter says. “It’s 100 per cent Australian-made. We literally bred the grape. It’s not grown anywhere else in the world.” 

There’s no denying that wine, at its core, is agriculture, and Mother Nature regularly deals a rough hand to hardworking farmers across the nation. Carter, surprisingly, even finds a silver lining in oversupply and collapsing bulk wine prices: a phenomenon that has many fearing for the fate of the Riverland, even despite the award-winning output of Riverland producers like Alex Russell. 

“The market is correcting itself. Yes, it’s painful, but here’s what’s really happening: old vines are being pulled out not because they’re bad, but because they yield less tonnes per hectare, and when growers are paid by the tonne, old vines become bad business,” he says. “Before we write off the Riverland, remember this: The Swartland in South Africa was once a rural backwater known for wheat farming and bulk wine. Then in the late 1990s, winemakers like Eben Sadie saw the potential of old vines and cheap land. They launched the Swartland Revolution in 2010.” 

Most of Swartland’s wineries were established in the past two decades. Today, it’s thriving due to “old vines, regenerative farming, and minimal intervention winemaking,” Carter says. “The Riverland has old vines, hot climate, and land at a fraction of the price of premium regions. It doesn’t need obituaries. It needs vision.” In Carter’s eyes, The Swartland story proves “bulk wine regions” aren’t dead– they’re just waiting for someone brave enough to see differently. “That’s not a crisis. That’s evolution.” 

THE ONLY WAY IS... UP? 

Caillard, for his part, believes premiumisation is the way to go. But he’s at pains to make the distinction between simply marking up prices and truly considered market positioning. “Different to slapping a label on and increasing the price. I think Tolpuddle and Vasse Felix are models of the future for small-to-medium sized wineries. Showmanship plays a large part in their success.” 

Quality-wise, there’s certainly no better time to drink Australian wine. “We have to believe in ourselves. I believe we need to reset our gaze away from Europe into our own backyards and celebrate, promote and build a cause for Australian fine wine – on our terms – on our own unique values,” Caillard says.

“We have the largest plantings of surviving 19th and early 20th century vines in the world, we have genetic material that can be traced back to the earliest importations of grape vines, we have an abundance of old vines – over 35 years old, and most of our vineyards are planted on their own roots.” 

Among the vine rows in the wine region of South Australia's Riverland, which has borne the brunt of a challenging decade in Australian wine.

SEIZING THE NARRATIVE 

When Thistledown Wines won Best Wine at the 2025 McLaren Vale Wine Show for the Sands of Time 2024 Single Vineyard Blewitt Springs Grenache, UK-born founder Giles Cooke MW, and Scottish director Patrick Gilhooly pointed out the obvious.

“Given that in McLaren Vale, two of the people doing the most for raising the profile internationally are “outsiders”, are Aussies abroad doing enough or is there some sort of cultural cringe?” Cooke asks. “If there’s a lack of Aussie wines on London wine lists and some of these are run by Aussie somms, why is that?” 

He has a point. Across greater Sydney, the lack of support of New South Wales wines on local wine lists has been well documented. “For anyone with an international outlook, you’ll know just how difficult it is for Australian wine in all markets, including those traditionally most friendly,” Cooke says. “Though we are lucky to foster a wide variety of wines in McLaren Vale, we should focus less on making a wine for every occasion, but to focus on crafting world class wines that actually make the occasion.” 

In addition, storytelling matters, no matter the form. Napa Valley-based creative director Evan Roscoe brings an international perspective to the dinner table. “The biggest challenge to wine is the bulls*** it tells its customers,” Roscoe says. “There’s a disconnect between what wine actually is, the people who make it, and the drivel that we tell customers in an attempt to make them care about it all.” Social media is the greatest opportunity for any brand and any industry ever, by Roscoe’s reckoning, to fix that. 

“We should be transmitting our values and stories with heightened vigour and belief,” Caillard agrees. “This goes beyond the one-dimensional prism of point-scoring into a more holistic approach to wine consumption. That wine is a cultural necessity. Something that enlivens our hearts, our souls and wellbeing – while honouring and celebrating our unique landscape, the people whose shoulders we stand on and our Australia identity.” 

Above all, we need to remember that wine is special and raise a glass to that. “It’s the single unbroken thread of humanity that stretches back to when we painted on cave walls and danced around fires,” Roscoe says. “It’d be a real shame if we messed it all up now because we were too afraid of drawing on the walls and making a fool of ourselves.”