Australia's finest

Show a Frenchman a flock of emus strutting through an Australian meadow, and he's more likely to start contemplating his next meal than to consider the wine making possibilities of the terrain. It might put him off his medium rare emu to learn that the virgin soil being trampled by this meaty, flightless bird is in fact a new 500-acre vineyard, from which its owners, Southcorp, intend to produce pounds 10-plus premium wines in next to no time. Quelle horreur!

It may seem a little arrogant to plant up a grazing field and expect an instant top quality crop, when it has taken the French decades to match sites with grape varieties. But the Aussies mean business. Southcorp's A$7.5m (pounds 4m) Robe project, ten miles from the Southern Ocean near Coonawarra, is just one of the ambitious investments spearheaded by Australia's four major wine companies: Southcorp, BRL-Hardy, Orlando-Wyndham and Mildara- Blass.

After a disappointing vintage in 1995, this year's record 850,000-tonne crop has encouraged Australian producers to try to double production, to reach the equivalent of 1.3 billion bottles a year by 2010. With potentially interesting grape varieties (sangiovese, nebbiolo and viognier) largely confined to experimental blocks, most of the new premium wines will come from the usual suspects: chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon and shiraz.

To achieve this target, vineyards will have to increase in size from a total of 48,000 hectares to 84,000. So will we have Aussie chardonnay and cabernet coming out of our ears? No worries, mate, say the men from Oz. Like latter-day empire builders, Australians base their expectations on the bold assumption that the Germans, Dutch and South-East Asians will enjoy the voluptuous fruit flavours and velvety textures of Aussie wines as much as British, Swedish and American palates have.

The Big Four leading the assault are a product of the merger mania of the last seven years. Leader of the pack is Southcorp, which crushed more than a fifth of this year's harvest and is responsible for a bewildering number of wine brands including Penfolds, Lindemans, Wynns, Seaview, Seppolt and Tollana. It is now expanding into the high-profile Yarra Valley, with the part-acquisition of Coldstream Hills, producer of some of Australia's best pinot noir.

Penfolds' gleaming new winery at Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley, with three-and-a-half acres devoted to barrel sheds alone, is already poised to accommodate 30,000 tonnes of premium red and white grapes. Robe included, Southcorp is spending A$100m (pounds 54m) on vineyard and winery expansion, with extensive plantings in New South Wales and Victoria.

Since hitching itself to the giant Riverland co-operative of Berri-Renmano in 1992, Hardy's, reincarnated as BRL-Hardy, is Australia's second largest group, crushing 150,000 tonnes of grapes this year. BRL-Hardy still produces more bulk than bottled wine, but, like Southcorp, it aims to control more premium wines by the year 2000. Bread and butter brands include Nottage Hill and Stamps of Australia; fine wines include Chateau Reynella, Leasingham, Houghton and Yarra Burn. allowing wine makers a freer hand to develop premium wines, including a new sparkling wine range, will give a sharper focus to the BRL-Hardy range.

Following the 1990 merger of Orlando-Wyndham, the group today is a 100,000- tonne operation whose raison d'etre is to produce two million cases a year of the dependable Jacob's Creek. Wyndham brands such as the Bin 555 Hermitage are resolutely commercial, and Orlando's traditional approach is confirmed by its championing of the relatively uncommercial riesling. With a new Barossa shiraz, Orlando-Wyndham is attempting to bridge the gap between Jacob's Creek, at the base of its pyramid, and premium wines such as St Hugo Coonawarra Cabernet and Lawson's Padthaway Shiraz.

At number four, Foster's-owned Mildara Blass is comparatively small on paper, with a crush of 40,000 tonnes. Its aim, when its A$30m, 5,000-acre expansion is complete, is to produce nearly two-thirds of all its own grapes. Despite crushing only 5 per cent of Australia's wine grapes, Mildara Blass's concentration on high quality bottled wines gives it a quarter of Australia's premium market. Wolf Blass is the safe brand; more adventurous wine drinkers go for regional brands: Coonawarra's Jamieson's Run and Robertson's Well, the Yarra Valley's Yarra Ridge, McLaren Vale- based Andrew Garrett, and Annie's Lane from the Clare Valley. Mildara Blass' recent bid for the Rothbury group, including Saltram, Bailey's and St Huberts, should add clout to its already significant share of the premium wine market

Recommended wines

1994 Saltram Classic Semillon, pounds 4.99, Sainsbury's. Zingy, fresh, lemon- and-lime-like semillon character

1995 Penfolds Koonunga Hill Chardonnay, pounds 4.99, Asda, EH Booth, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Somerfield, Tesco, Waitrose. Classy oak, refreshing zip and underlying flavours of vanilla and butterscotch

1994 St Huberts Yarra Valley Chardonnay, pounds 8.99, Fuller's. Refined, intense chardonnay. Understated oak spiciness blends with tangily refreshing, cool-climate peach and melon flavours

1993 Penfolds Kalimna Bin 28 Shiraz, pounds 7.95-pounds 7.99, Asda, EH Booth, Sainsbury, Spar, Tesco. Classic, blackberryish red, matured in American oak; a rich, firmly structured, vanilla-scented, spicy blend of McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley and Padthaway shiraz

1993 Chateau Reynella Cabernet/Merlot, pounds 7.99, selected Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Fuller's. Minty, liquoricey aromas and lots of spicy oak sweetness on the palate, underpinned by ripely juicy blackcurrant fruitiness and powerfully constructed tannins