Western Australia

australia’s biggest state has the country’s most isolated wine regions in its south-west corner.

Nowhere have the winds of change blown harder since 1970 than in Western Australia. In that year, more than 90% of the state’s wine was made from grapes grown in the then Swan Valley (now a subregion of the Swan District, in the Greater Perth Zone); by 1980 the figure was 59%; and by 2003 it was less than 11%. The other side of the coin has been the emergence of the Margaret River and Great Southern regions spanning the far south western corner of the state.