Best Australian reds, whites, sparkling, fortified and spirits of the year
We’ve never produced better wine. But the underfunded industry bodies charged with promoting our produce in the all-important export markets have lost some storytelling zeal, says Nick Ryan as he launches his first Top 100 collection.
We don’t know for sure what Heraclitus the Ephesian was drinking when he declared that life’s only constant is change, but let’s assume a philosophical nugget so enduring must have come from a glass of something pretty good.
Change is the overarching theme of this year’s Drinks Issue of The Weekend Australian Magazine. It’s fitting given that, after 2023 saw the lowest national crush in more than 20 years, the 2024 vintage bounced back to rise 9 per cent. But the change we should address first is authorship.
What for so long had been James Halliday’s Top 100 has evolved into this fresh new issue, and there have been changes around how that collection is compiled. James would base his Top 100 on the work he did every year for his Wine Companion, but the 100 wines that feature in the following pages are assembled another way.
Many have stood out on the tasting bench and been squirrelled away to appear here. Others have grabbed my attention when I’ve been judging at wine shows. A few are observed in the wineries that made them, and re-tasted once released to make sure that early promise has followed through.
This year there’s a wine that was on my radar from the morning the grapes that made it were plucked from the vine. There’s something about bumping into a winemaker in the local greengrocer and having them tell you they’ve just picked the best riesling fruit they’ve ever seen that piques your interest.
And a good number of the wines here were discovered at dinner tables and wine bars across the country, often in the company of those who can share my excitement .... or at least tolerate it.
As ever, a “gold medal” wine will sit north of 95 points. The tier below (90-94 points) includes wines nudging gold medal territory that may be as enjoyable on plenty of other metrics. But this is not simply a collection of the highest pointed wines of the year.
The wines showcased in my inaugural Drinks Issue for The Weekend Australian Magazine earned their spot by way of such factors as persuasive pricing, the winemakers’ understanding of style or the distinctive story the wines tell.
Excluding the small quirk that has always allowed a few interlopers from Champagne to make it into the sparkling section, this list represents a widescreen picture of contemporary Australian wine.
Chardonnay continues to generate serious excitement in our cooler regions, and a spectacularly good 2024 vintage for Clare Valley riesling explains their strong representation here. Indeed, in 2024 chardonnay had the largest crush, with 332,643 tonnes, overtaking shiraz to resume the title of top variety by crush size, which it last held in 2013.
Grenache is still the Zoolander of Australian wine – “so hot right now” – with beautiful pinot noir, statuesque cabernet sauvignon and a diverse collection of shiraz styles all playing a part, too. The large number of wines beyond the tight traditional grouping of the “noble” varieties of France led me to think the bundling of grapes like lagrein, arinto, mencia and picpoul under an umbrella called “alternative varieties” is a practice on the way out. Varieties such as these will become increasingly mainstream.
From the profound 2022 Vanya cabernet from Cullen – first tasted barefoot in Margaret River, and later elevated to my wine of the year when it called to me again on the tasting bench – to the Lake Breeze Bernoota I’ve been calling the best value red in the country since my twenties, there’s something for everyone here.
It’s 30 years since I first walked into a bottleshop in Sydney’s Kings Cross for a casual shift that would somehow become a career. And at no time in that 30 years has Australian wine been as compelling a story as it is now. We’re making the best wines we ever have in this country, across a stylistic range that truly shows the vastness of viticultural opportunity on this continent. Which makes the shoddy way we communicate that to the world all the more disappointing.
The industry bodies charged with promoting Australian wine in the all-important export markets are sorely underfunded and seem to have lost some storytelling zeal. The work done to reverse the disastrous tariff impositions from China was hugely important, but that just helps to get Australian wines back on the shelves. Despite the modest recovery compared with 2023, the 2024 crush remains 18 per cent below the 10-year average of 1.73 million tonnes. With China’s economy slowing, and the rapidly expanding capacity of its domestic wine industry presenting a fresh new challenge, the goal is not just getting Australian wine on the shelves but flying off them.
In too many markets Australian wine is stereotyped at best and utterly ignored at worst. Put a line-up of the best chardonnays produced in Australia into a line-up of their global counterparts, and the results astound anyone who tastes them blind. Yet too many gatekeepers in these markets remain ignorant.
There are tough times coming for Australia’s wine sector, and some contraction seems inevitable. It doesn’t make sense to use precious resources to produce nondescript wines that tell people nothing more about Australian winemaking other than we have enough sun to farm grape sugar for alcohol. But there is an exciting, and hopefully prosperous, future for all our wine regions. We just have to be serious about how we get there.
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This list is part of a broader series which sets out the best Australian wines of 2024 according to both price and quality. Discover more:
