The South Australian wine industry is responsible for more than half the production of all Australian wine. The state of South Australia has a vast diversity in geography and climate which allows the state to be able to successfully produce a wide range of grape varieties-from the cool climate Riesling variety in the Clare Valley to the big, full bodied Shiraz wines of the Barossa Valley.

As with most agriculture in Australia, irrigation is a vital component to the success of the South Australian wine industry. Some of Australia's most well known wines like the Penfolds Grange, Jacob's Creek, Yalumba and Henschke Hill of Grace are produced here as well as many of Australia's mass produced box wines.

History

The earliest recorded evidence of vine planting was in 1836 by a settler named John Barton Hack in Chichester Gardens, North Adelaide. In 1838 George Stevenson planted a vineyard in Adelaide and may have been producing wine as early as 1841. Following the spread of urban development, those Hack's vines were pulled up with a new vineyard at Echunga Springs near Mount Barker. In 1843, he sent a case of wine made from the vineyard to Queen Victoria, being the first Australian wine to reach the Queen.

Climate and geography

Located in south central Australia, the state of South Australia is bordered by all four other states of the Australian mainland with Western Australia to the west, Queensland to the north east, New South Wales to the east, Victoria to the south east and the territory, Northern Territory to the north.

The Great Australian Bight forms the region's southern coastline. The climate of the region varies greatly with the more interior regions like Riverland being intensely hot and growing cooler as you get closer to the coastal regions like Adelaide Hills. Across the region there is low annual rainfall which necessitates the need for irrigation to curb the threat of droughts.

Vines are grown at types of altitudes in south Australia from the low valley regions of the Barossa and the Riverland area up to the 1,970 ft (600 m) vineyards at Pewsey Vale in the Eden Valley. The soil type is also varied across the region from the well known terra rosa of the Coonawarra region, the limestone-marl based soils of the Adelaide and Riverland area, to the sandy, clay loam based soils of the Barossa.

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