The Best Of The Best : Drinks In Australia
An old Australian joke says that a traditional seven course Australian meal is a meat pie and a six pack of beer! Australians do love their beer, but today they also relish some of the best good value wine in the world. It is estimated that there are 10,000 different Australian wine sons the market at any one time. While the health conscious can choose from dozens of bottled waters and fresh fruit juices, this is also the country that makes alcoholic lemonade from its lemon crop and another alcoholic drink from rhubarb. Imported wines, beers and spirits are also readily available but you will always be reminded to buy Australian while you are there.
White Wine: When Australians first adopted table wine sin the 1960s and 1970s,their preference was for a sweet,Moselle type wine – Riesling and Gewurztraminer.Later,they embraced drier styles of wine such as Semillon,Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, the worlds leading white wine grape. They also began to show a passion for wood-matured wines. Today other varieties, such as Marsanne, have been successfully planted. Australian winemakers also use noble rot to make luscious desert wines.
Red Wine: The benchmark for all Australian red wine is Grange Hermitage, It was created by Max Schubert in the late 1950′s and his thoughts were that in order for a wine to reach it’s full flavor it need to remain in the cellar for decades. Wolf Blass, on the other hand, created a drink now approach with quicker maturing wines.
Beer: Australian beer is vat fermented real ale or lager, consumed chilled. At full strength is has an alcohol content of around 4.8 percent, while light beers have less then 3 percent. Some of the more popular lagers and stouts of today are James Boag and Cascade from Tasmania,Castlemain XXXX from Queensland, Fosters and Victoria Bitter (VB) from Victoria, Tooheys red and blue labels from New South Wales and Coopers Sparkling Ale (known locally as lunatic soup) from South Australia.
Spirits: Australian distillers produce fine dark and white rums from Queenslands sugar cane plantations. The more notable labels are Bundaberg from the town of the same name and Beenleigh.Australia’s grape vintage is also the basis of good value domestic brandies .Popular labels include St Agnes and Hardy’s.
As always, It is important to remember….No matter where you are when you are drinking DO NOT DRIVE HOME. There are car services available to take you home and if you are with a group of friend you should also have one a designated driver.
