If you find yourself watching the Olympics with a glass of wine, raise a toast to the host country. We probably wouldn't be casually tippling in front of the telly at all if it weren't for Australia. The Aussies knocked all the starch out of wine, kicking the uppercrust snobbery and the special occasion awe of it to smithereens. They made it easy and everyday. No complicated region and estate names - it was just plain Chardonnay, Cabernet or Shiraz, mate, and it didn't cost much and was dangerously easy to drink.
In less than 30 years, the Australians have shown more supine producer-nations a thing or two about how to get ahead. Why bother with all the red tape and restrictions of regional appellations? Just find the best grapes at the best price, even if they're hundreds of miles from the winery, and get 'em there in big refrigerated trucks. Blend wines from different grapes, and grapes from different regions; make the stuff any way you like, as long as consumers like the end result. Then market it like mad, while the lads in Chianti and Rioja are still arguing themselves into a coma about permitted types of oak.
Gritting its teeth, the rest of the wine world has watched Australia blaze a Ned Kelly trail into major markets. Winemakers from Down Under have been flown in to help make more supple, sexy wines. Varietal labelling has caught on to such a degree that every country is in on the Chardonnay-Cabernet act. Maverick producers are quietly flouting local rules. Marketeers are dreaming up so many catchy names that Jacob's Creek and Long Flat Red seem tame by comparison.
Where does this leave Australia? Beavering away in another direction. While the big brands continue to pour forth, there's a whole new emphasis on high-quality, low-volume wines - bottles with a clear-cut personality, forged by the soils and climates of different regions. You'll hear a loud blast of Back to the Future in this. The country that built its wine industry on the notion that regional differences didn't count is staking the next phase of its development on precisely the opposite point of view. It's a vive la difference approach that dear, old Europe has seen sense in for centuries.
For us drinkers, nothing could be more welcome - because the world is too full of bland, boring wines that taste depressingly alike. There are only two problems. The first is that we're going to have to get to grips with the specialities of a clatter of different regions. So far, consumers have cottoned on to the fact that the Barossa is the place for big, beefy Shiraz and Coonawarra, the home of classy Cabernet, but the list of prized localities is a lot longer (see below). The second snag is that we'll have to be prepared to pay quite a bit more for these landmark wines than we've been used to shelling out for everyday bottles with the word Australia on the label. If you're one of the people who drive a £20,000 car and think nothing of a £2,000 holiday but baulk at occasionally spending £10 to £20 on a really good bottle, this may be the time to revise your spending pattern.
We're going to see more of these regional beauties, I'm convinced - in retail outlets and, perhaps more especially, in restaurants; their sheer drinkability at a comparatively tender age makes them popular with both customers and bean-counters. This prediction is based partly on the excitement I've felt myself, stumbling upon so many sensationally individualistic wines on visits to Australia, and partly on the realisation that more of the country's best wines are arriving here all the time.
Here's an interesting example. Wines Direct of Mullingar - a company dedicated to France for 12 years - has just launched a new list of Australian regional wines. As with his French discoveries, Paddy Keogh sourced them the hard way, travelling all over the country - undaunted by geography on a somewhat larger scale than the Languedoc. Why? "Our customers are looking for something a bit different, and I'd started to believe that, with this new focus on regionality, Australia could provide that."
Already, he reports, restaurants such as Dromoland and Peacock Alley have ordered some of the wines he's bringing in, from top names such as Lenswood and Grosset. Meanwhile, private customers are asking for mixed cases that are half French, half Australian.
"It's such an enormous country - the wines are vastly different from one area to another," he says. "Just like the people. Adelaide girls are different from Sydney girls . . . or so I was told." Now there's something to ponder as you decide whether to uncork a lean, elegant Shiraz from the Hunter Valley or a headspinningly voluptuous one from McLaren Vale.