Alternative Reality

This book is for anyone who wants to deepen their understanding of why the Australian wine scene is the way it is today and get more enjoyment out of a wider range of delicious wines.

Australian wine has been through a revolution over the last two decades. New grape varieties, new wine styles, new winemaking personalities, and cultures have emerged, dramatically changing how this country thinks about and enjoys wine. Much of this change can be traced to a wine competition in Mildura, in the remote northwest of Victoria.

Since 2001, the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show has examined and championed exciting new non-mainstream grapes (anything but chardonnay and shiraz), with a roll call of leading winemakers, sommeliers, writers, and viticulturists travelling from all over the country each November to talk and taste, to swap ideas, and to imagine a different wine landscape.

Alternative Reality tells the story of those last two decades; not just of the show, but also of the wider world of Australian wine, through profiles of the key people who made it happen. It also includes comprehensive information about more than 150 different alternative grape varieties currently grown in Australia—what the wines made from these grapes taste like, and who the key producers are.