Jancis Robinson

Australia: History

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About
‘On 24th January two bunches of grapes were cut in the Governor’s garden from cuttings of vines brought three years before from the Cape of Good Hope.’ The year was 1791, the chronicler Watkin Tench, and the site of the garden is now occupied by the Hotel Inter-Continental in Sydney’s Macquarie Street.

Between 1820 and 1840 commercial viticulture was progressively established in New South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia, Victoria, and finally South Australia. It was based upon comprehensive collections of vinifera vines imported from Europe: there are no native vines in Australia, and neither crosses nor hybrids have ever taken root. Italian immigrants (in Riverland and Riverina), Silesians (in the Barossa and Clare Valleys), Dalmatians (in the Swan Valley of western australia), and Swiss (Yarra Valley and Geelong in Victoria) all played key roles in the establishment of viticulture.