Wine of the Week – Sweet from the dry
You often see the term “Southeastern Australia” on your search through the wine shelves. These wines are made up of blended juice from wineries from 3 states; South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. This appellation was established in 1994 and provides you with low priced, but good quality wine.
This region of Australia produces around 40% of the countries agriculture. This area is undergoing a server drought in recent years. The latest rainfall statistics in for the last 21 months show in some areas they have received the lowest percentages in history. There are various opinions on why this is, but all scientists agree that global warming is responsible at some level. Australia only signed the Kyoto Agreement in late 2007 as the first act of business of Prime Mister Kevin Rudd’s newly elected government.
Global warming used to be a leap of faith. The experts sounded like doomsday predictors and the general public did not see any changes to their everyday life. Now with drought in this region of Australia, the wine industry has its first warning shot. If global warming continues, the traditional wine growing regions may not be around any more. This could see rich fruity shiraz being made in Germany, or Rieslings being made on the slopes of Norwegian mountains.
This week’s Wine of the Week is from a drought affected area in Australia. The 2004 Brown Brothers Late Harvested Orange Muscat & Flora. The town of Milawa, where Brown Brothers is located, is in one of the most drought affected areas in Australia. This wine is a very original sweet and light wine. This region is famed for desert wines, however this wine stands out with its freshness and complexity. It is filled with fresh apricoty tastes, that go very will with similar light fresh deserts, such as a simple fruit platter or a delicate custard based desert.
At around $10 it is a very good value finish to a good meal. It is distributed pretty much world wide, but you may need to visit a few places before you find it. If you do give it a try, you will discover an interesting wine you will want to come back for more.
It is unfortunate that consumers in the United States do not have the access to the truly Australian real wines which originate outside of the ‘South Eastern ‘ region, there are some absolutely fantastic wines which originate in both South Australia Barossa and Margaret Region of Western Australia.
With a bit of searching you can find these wines and usually under the $14.95 retail price point.