Australia's Geographical Indications

The process of formally mapping Australia's wine regions is all but complete, although will never come to a complete halt - for one thing, climate change is lurking in the wings. The division into states, zones, regions and subregions follows; those regions or subregions marked with an asterisk are not yet registered, and may never be, but are in common usage. In two instances I have gone beyond the likely finalisation: it makes no sense to me that the Hunter Valley should be a zone, the region Hunter, and then subregions which are all in the Lower Hunter Valley. I have elected to stick with the traditional division between the Upper Hunter Valley on the one hand, and the Lower on the other.

I am also in front of the game with Tasmania, dividing it into Northern, Southern and East Coast, and, to a lesser degree, have anticipated that the Queensland Coastal region will seek recognition under this or some similar name.

In early 2008, New England Australia in New South Wales became the most recent region to be formally registered. It is a cumbersome name, but designed to head off objections from other parts of the world (for example, in the US) with the ‘New England’ name. For the purposes of this book, I have dropped the word ‘Australia’ from the regional name, simply to avoid confusion.