Australian Wines 101: Travel Australia in Just One Sip
By Ryan Reynolds

Okay, we admit, Australians are generally a beer-guzzling nation. Aussies like beer with everythingor as it is called there, piss. One almost automatically thinks the Auld Lang Syne is always sung while lifting a mug of piss.

But Aussies are also a wine-loving nation. In fact, when it comes to wine-making, Australia is the New World, with its undeniably gorgeous offering to world: the Shiraz wine. Named after that city in ancient Persia (now Iran), which 7,000 years ago transformed the local grape into a magnificent sparkling beverage, the Australian shiraz is a delicate, subtle, yet powerfully spicy experience swirling in a long-stemmed glass.

In Australia, Barossa Valley is where the most uninhibitedly full-bodied Shiraz wine comes from. From a mere five vine cuttings of the Shiraz brought to the country by James Busby in 1832, the Shiraz wine has indeed come a long way. A taste of the Shiraz wine is always an amazing plunge into something sophisticated and at the same time laced with the wilderness. Sophisticated wilderness. Which is perhaps why the world has come to equate the shiraz wine with all things Australian.

The shiraz wine is a carnival of notes, from the fruity to the spicy to the earthy. Every sip of this deep red wine tells a bold story, puts forward a complex but brilliant statement. If anything, the whole point of the Shiraz wine is a reminder not to deprive yourself of the best and most exquisite things life has to offer.

When you travel Australia then, don't just get enamored with beer. Sit down to a lovely goblet of bubbly shiraz, take a bottle or two with you back home for your relatives, and tell them about one of the wondrous wonders you've discovered about the Land Down Under.

It's about time you travel Australia and get drunk in its loveliness.