What To Drink In Australia
An old Australian joke says that a traditional seven course Australian meal is a meat pie and a six pack of beer! Australians do love their beer, but today they also relish some of the best good value wine in the world. It is estimated that there are 10,000 different Australian wine sons the market at any one time. While the health conscious can choose from dozens of bottled waters and fresh fruit juices, this is also the country that makes alcoholic lemonade from its lemon crop and another alcoholic drink from rhubarb. Imported wines, beers and spirits are also readily available but you will always be reminded to buy Australian while you are there.
White Wine: This was the first wine introduced to Australians in the 1960’s. Prior to white wine, Australian tended to fancy the sweeter tasting wines, such as a Moselle type of wine. Later they became fond of the drier styles like Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.
Red Wine: The benchmark for all Australian red wine is Grange Hermitage, It was created by Max Schubert in the late 1950’s and his thoughts were that in order for a wine to reach it’s full flavor it need to remain in the cellar for decades. Wolf Blass, on the other hand, created a drink now approach with quicker maturing wines.
Beer: Australian beer is vat fermented real ale or lager, consumed chilled. At full strength is has an alcohol content of around 4.8 percent, while light beers have less then 3 percent. Some of the more popular lagers and stouts of today are James Boag and Cascade from Tasmania,Castlemain XXXX from Queensland, Fosters and Victoria Bitter (VB) from Victoria, Tooheys red and blue labels from New South Wales and Coopers Sparkling Ale (known locally as lunatic soup) from South Australia.
Spirits: Australian distillers produce fine dark and white rums from Queenslands sugar cane plantations. The more notable labels are Bundaberg from the town of the same name and Beenleigh.Australia’s grape vintage is also the basis of good value domestic brandies .Popular labels include St Agnes and Hardy’s.
The one thing to remember is that it is okay to enjoy yourself but you must not drive after drinking EVER! Please designate someone as the driver for the evening or hire a car service. It’s the only way to keep a happy and fun evening safe as well.