On the surface, Australian wine has a lot to be proud of. Virtually unknown as an export entity just fifteen years ago, it has redefined the way the world looks at wine. Based on a system that encourages both flexibility and accountability, Australia's success in marketing its inexpensive and flavoursome varietal wines through its skill at developing and promoting international brands is a modern marketing phenomenon. Names like Lindemans, Rosemount, Jacob's Creek and Yellowtail are instantly recognised wherever wine is consumed.

Scratch a little deeper, and Australian wine is an industry in crisis. An over-supply of young vine wine, a flooded domestic market, a plethora of labels nobody seems to want, a declining return per litre of exports and a frankly damning response from an increasing proportion of the international wine press is beginning to affect the confidence of this once-unstoppable juggernaut.

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The truth is that Australian wine needs to reinvent itself, and quickly. Jingoistic strains from the European media would suggest that the notions of terroir, tradition and individuality are the birthright of European vineyards alone. Across the Atlantic come cries similarly bereft of intellect or reason that Australia should produce nothing other than the exaggerated and caricature-like expressions of shiraz deliberately and effectively customised to suit the palates of well-known wine critics.

Australia's challenge is to make more wines of absolute world class and to put them irresistibly in front of the world's leading buyers, critics and sommeliers. Australia is already making some wines of top standard, and plenty of others close to it. However, given its abundance of potentially great sites and climates, plus its complete lack of appellation controllee-like legislation that stifles experimentation and innovation, it's just not doing enough.

To a degree, its visible success in supplying inexpensive daily beverage wines to consumers all over the world is hampering its ability to be taken seriously as a maker of the finest, most subtle, elegant and complex wines for which buyers have traditionally associated exclusively with France or Italy.

To put it simply, Australian wine has expertly gained market share and awareness. Now it just needs to convert that into profit.

Brands. Australia owns an overwhelming proportion of the most successful export wine brands, especially in the UK and US markets. As such, the first wine that people might try, or become attached to, is often Australian. Despite the caning that many of these wines receive in the UK media on a not infrequent basis, their sales continue to increase. The buyers of such wines, it would appear, trust these brands more than they do the opinions of many UK-based wine pundits.

Big guns. While it is undeniable that there are not enough Australian wines competing in the elite end of the market, Australia does have its share of icons. Rather, however, than creating and developing an overseas demand for more such wines, high-profile examples like Penfolds Grange, Rosemount's Roxburgh Chardonnay, Grant Burge Meshach Shiraz and Henschke's Hill of Grace are more effective in promoting the less expensive wines of the same producers. They hand Australia a significant marketing advantage over most New World countries.

A clean environment. Measured by area, Australia is predominantly a warm to hot wine producing country. It's also largely unpolluted and clean. It's also a long way from places like Chernobyl. Many people have taken to drinking Australian wine simply because they know it won't make them glow in the dark. Viticulturists have been steadily phasing out and in some cases eliminating the application of chemicals in vineyards as the country steadily heads towards a more organic system of growing grapes. This trend is even occurring in the cooler and wetter regions of the southeast and southwest, although in a significantly more challenging environment.

Consistency of climate. Recent years have finally debunked the myth that Australia doesn't experience vintage variation. The south of the country moved from the hottest on record in 2000 to an even hotter vintage in 2001. That was immediately followed by the coolest vintage ever recorded in 2002. That said, Australian growers should be able to make wine from ripe grapes in all but the very rarest of vintages. Not only is chapitalisation illegal in Australia, it's patently unnecessary unless a vineyard is poorly sited or managed.

A technological edge. Led by the Australian Wine Research Institute, Australia has long enjoyed a technological break over most of its competitors. In a tight and over-supplied global market, the judicious use of technology can deliver a better product at competitive price-points. Recent advances such as advancements in micro-oxygenation and others that facilitate the removal from wine of volatile acidity, excessive alcohol and taints related to brettanomyces and even smoke from bushfires, will continue to give an edge to Australian wine.

Lack of appellation control. Not only are Australians entirely free to experiment with new varieties and new regions without being hampered by a government body, but to a large measure the self-imposed appellation control systems deployed over Europe have hindered the ability of many nations to compete against Australia in the development of large-scale export brands. A lunatic fringe is calling for the development of such a system in Australia, but anyone so doing is surely on the payroll of the INAO.

Climate change. The positive aspect of this double-sided sword is that cooler and more marginal Australian regions such as the Macedon Ranges, the Mornington Peninsula, much of Tasmania, Gippsland and Mount Barker, are warming up sufficiently for their vineyards to achieve full physiological ripeness more dependably.

Too WASP-ish. No doubt about it, Australia's ready success in the markets of the US and UK has developed a certain reluctance to mix it with the rest in significant non English-speaking markets in Europe and Asia. Australia has too many export eggs in too few baskets and needs to work harder to get out of its comfort zone.

The water issue. The ravages of the unprecedented recent four-year drought - which remains an ongoing issue in much of the continent - have finally focused the minds of Australians on this country's most critical environmental and economic issue: water. Against all logic, Australia still grows rice and cotton. Viticulture represents one of the most efficient end-uses for Australian water, and if you take into account the associated benefits to tourism and rural economies, is a no-brainer as an ideal end-use for this hotly contested resource. Australia's environment is old and fragile, and salinity is an ever-present issue. Whatever use to which its water is ultimately applied must be widely considered to avoid a widespread catastrophe.

Not enough premier wines. Until the day arrives when more Australian wines appear on the lists of Europe's leading restaurants, a large and influential segment of the market will neither take them seriously enough nor give them the credit they are due. To a very large degree, Australia's dominance in the cheaper varietal segment of the market has hindered its ability to market with credibility its individual vineyard wines of excellence and distinction.

Cool climate credibility. Since most of them haven't actually visited Australia and particularly its cooler regions, it's not an easy thing for many UK wine drinkers to accept the notion that a place like this actually has more than twenty different established cool-climate wine regions, with more on the way. Its cooler regions are responsible for the cabernet blends, chardonnays, shirazes and rieslings that Australians believe stack up very neatly against European wines from these varieties. Largely because of recent high-profile American interest in the ultra-ripe wines of the Barossa and McLaren Vale, this country has been tarred with a hot climate brush. Just over a century ago, the Yarra Valley's major market was London.

Too big for their boots? Regrettably, some Australians involved with the international success of Australian wine have become a little cocky. That's well and good in the privacy of your own home, but never, in any circumstances, in the international marketplace. Frankly, and sadly, the attitude of some Australians isn't helping the cause. They should pull their heads right in.

Climate change. The negative contribution of climate change is already evident. Export forecasters are predicting such phenomena as reduced rain patterns in what have been key agricultural areas, plus a more regular occurrence of severe heat waves. They're already happening. Anyone near Griffith or Clare for two weeks in February 2004 would nearly have been fried. Clearly, this is a global problem, with many, many more losers than winners.

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