The Red Wines that Shaped Australia

Sometimes a wine comes along that changes the course of history. It inspires other winemakers to plant vineyards of their own, even establish new regions; it introduces revolutionary winemaking techniques; it starts a new conversation about wine, builds culture, influences taste. 

Here’s a dozen era-defining Australian red wines from across three centuries. Importantly, rather than just being historical relics, long-gone one-offs, or unobtainable curios, these are wines that have retained their relevance today: either the vineyards still exist (or have been replanted in the same place), or the brands are still commercially available. 

Yering Pinot (vintage unknown), Yarra Valley

In 1856, at a party hosted by Swiss settler Paul de Castella at his Yarra Valley property, Yering, guests ran out of Pommard, the French Burgundy they’d been enjoying. So, a waiter was dispatched to the cellar to bring up some of the pinot produced from an acre of vines planted at Yering when the region was settled in the 1830s. The wine was so good and the reaction so positive – “Better than Pommard!” declared the guests – that de Castella decided to substantially expand the vineyard and build a large-scale winery, helping the Yarra Valley become one of Australia’s most important 19th century wine regions.

Current vintage: 2022 Yering Station Reserve Pinot Noir

1872 Craiglee Hermitage, Sunbury

Craiglee was an ambitious winery established on Melbourne’s fringe in the mid-19th century: initially successful and internationally acclaimed, it eventually declined and had closed by the 1920s. Three decades after the vines were pulled out, a cache of bottles of Craiglee ‘Hermitage’ (shiraz) from the 1872 vintage was uncovered. The wine, by all accounts, was remarkable, still drinking well on its 100th birthday, inspiring young farmer Pat Carmody to re-plant shiraz on the same site as the original vineyard. Pat’s shiraz soon became – and remains – a benchmark for cool-climate, spicy expressions of the variety.

Current vintage: 2019 Craiglee Reserve Shiraz

1930 Matthew Lang and Co Hunter River Cabernet, Hunter Valley

Hunter Valley wine pioneer George Wyndham established Dalwood vineyard in the 1830s, planting a large number of varieties including cabernet sauvignon, petit verdot, touriga, and tempranillo. In 1930, Dalwood winemaker John Davoren produced a particularly good cabernet from those old vines and sold it to wine merchant Matthew Lang. In 1960, Sydney surgeon and wine lover Max Lake tasted that wine and was so blown away that he established his own Hunter vineyard, Lake’s Folly, inspiring generations of other doctors and lawyers to set up their own boutique wineries.

Current vintage: 2022 Dalwood Estate Tempranillo Touriga

1944 Mount Pleasant Pinot Hermitage Light Dry Red, Hunter Valley

The remarkable – and remarkably long-lived – reds produced by legendary winemaker Maurice O’Shea from the 1930s to the 1950s are rightly considered some of Australia’s vinous treasures. As with this ‘Light Dry Red’ from 1944, O’Shea often blended shiraz with pinot noir, grown in a vineyard he’d planted in 1921. That vineyard, still in existence, is hugely important as it was the source of cuttings of a clone of pinot called MV6, which is now planted and highly valued by pinot makers across Australia. And, in the last decade or so, O’Shea’s pinot shiraz blend – ‘Light Dry Red’ – has come back into fashion.

Current vintage: 2023 Mount Pleasant Mount Henry Shiraz Pinot Noir

1952 Penfolds Grange Hermitage, Adelaide

This list wouldn’t be complete, of course, without Grange. The story of how Penfolds winemaker Max Schubert returned from a trip to Bordeaux in 1950 and decided to make a new style of full-bodied, long-lived, barrel-fermented red wine is well known – as is the enormous influence this new style of winemaking had on the rest on the industry. The first commercial vintage in 1952 was made from shiraz grown at Magill and Morphett Vale, and is still drinking well (according to those lucky enough to have tasted it), showing little sign of fading after more than 70 years.

Current vintage: 2020 Penfolds Grange

1967 d’Arenberg ‘Red Stripe’ Burgundy, McLaren Vale

Not all influential and important reds are “fine wines”: some are humble, everyday wines, even if they do also have the capacity to win awards and mature magnificently (a recently tasted 1973 was still glorious). This wine, first made in the 1960s and for many years sold in flagons as well as bottles, not only typified the old-fashioned, medium-bodied, soft-finish ‘Burgundy’ style of red, but also helped keep many of the region’s old grenache vineyards alive: if it weren’t for d’Arenberg buying the fruit for Red Stripe during the 1980s, those vines may well have been grubbed up when grenache was deeply unfashionable.

Current vintage: 2021 d'Arenberg d’Arry’s Original Grenache Shiraz

1982 Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River

When this won the Jimmy Watson Trophy for best one-year-old red at the Melbourne Wine Show – and when the 1983 vintage repeated the feat the following year – it made wine people on the eastern seaboard sit up and take notice of the then-emerging Margaret River region. It also epitomised the elegant, cooler style of cabernet sauvignon winemakers were chasing in the 1980s: leafy, earlier-picked, more 'elegant' wines. Indeed, from 1977 to 1989, the Jimmy Watson trophy, then the most prestigious in the country, was dominated by cabernets from cooler regions such as Coonawarra, the Yarra Valley and Padthaway.

Current vintage: 2020 Cape Mentelle Heritage Cabernet Sauvignon

1987 Coriole Sangiovese, McLaren Vale

Mark Lloyd was ahead of his time when he planted sangiovese at his family’s Coriole vineyards in the mid 1980s; when the wine made from those grapes began appearing in bottle shops and restaurants a few years later it helped inspire countless others to look beyond the mainstream grapes and styles. Fittingly, it was a wine grown and made at Coriole that won the first Australian Sangiovese Challenge in 1999 in Mildura: that competition then morphed into the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show, at which, in 2016, Coriole won the top trophy for their Nero d’Avola.

Current vintage: 2022 Coriole Vita Reserve Sangiovese

1994 Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir, Gippsland

This remains one of the greatest vintages of Bass Phillip’s painfully rare (and now eye-wateringly expensive) Reserve Pinot Noir. It was and is a controversial wine (not everyone appreciates the dense, extreme style or thinks the price tag is worth it), but there’s no doubt it has acted as a beacon for other pinot producers around the country. Phillip Jones, its maker until 2020 when he sold the vineyard, is also a divisive figure, but his stubborn determination to produce great wine in a part of Australia most people think of as dairy country remains inspirational.

Current vintage: 2022 Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir

1997 Wild Duck Creek Duck Muck, Heathcote

Arguably the most extreme of the full-bodied, concentrated, robust Australian shirazes 'discovered' by then-hugely influential US critic Robert Parker in the late 1990s. Parker’s high scores (99 points for the Duck Muck) and gushing praise for these wines led to immediate cult and collectible status, fuelled by the economic frenzy of the dot-com boom. The success of these idiosyncratic wines also led to a rash of copycat reds: suddenly every winemaker in every warm climate wine region in Australia was picking their shiraz riper, extracting more from the grapes and spending more on oak, chasing the high score and effusive review.

Current vintage: 2022 Wild Duck Creek Duck Muck

2005 Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier, Canberra District

Tim Kirk started adding some white viognier grapes to the fermenting shiraz at his family’s winery in Murrumbateman in 1992, inspired by the Côte-Rôtie wines he’d tasted on a trip to the Rhône Valley. By the early 2000s, he’d finessed the style, and created a benchmark for fine, detailed, cool-climate single-vineyard red wine – a welcome counterpoint, in many ways to the bigger, boofier wines of the Parker years. The Clonakilla wine also helped inspire many other makers to start experimenting with co-fermenting viognier, as well as other aromatic white grapes, with their red grapes.

Current vintage: 2023 Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier

2008 Ochota Barrels Fugazi Grenache, McLaren Vale

This was the first wine Adelaide Hills-based couple Taras and Amber Ochota made under their new label, using grenache sourced from an old vineyard in McLaren Vale. Named after a punk band (“A Fugazi CD was playing in the Kombi when we turned up to collect the grapes,” says Amber), using natural-leaning techniques – wild ferment, lots of whole bunches, old oak, minimal additions. The wine was different – translucent, fresh, spicy, bright – and helped kickstart a revolution in how grenache is produced, talked about and valued in this country.

Current vintage: 2024 Ochota Barrels Fugazi Grenache

Max Allen is drinks columnist for the Financial Review, Australian correspondent for JancisRobinson.com, and author of Intoxicating: Ten drinks that shaped Australia, which won the international André Simon Memorial Fund Award, and was named best wine book at the Wine Communicators of Australia awards.