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- Victorian wine is wine made in the Australian state of Victoria. With over 600 wineries, Victoria has more wine producers than any other Australian wine-producing state but ranks third in overall wine production due to the lack of a mass bulk wine-producing area like South Australia's Riverland and New South Wales's Riverina. Viticulture has existed in Victoria since the 19th century and experienced a high point in the 1890s when the region produced more than half of all wine produced in Australia. The phylloxera epidemic that soon followed took a hard toll on the Victoria wine industry which did not fully recover till the 1950s. Today winemaking is spread out across the state and features premier wine regions such as Heathcote, Rutherglen, Pyrenees and the Yarra Valley. Single varietal wines produced in Victoria include the Australian mainstays of Shiraz and Chardonnay as well as Cabernet, Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc with increasing plantings in the late 1990s and 2000s of Viognier, Sangiovese, Pinot noir, Pinot Gris and Nebbiolo, and even the more obscure Graciano, Lagrein and Tannat. Victorian red wines are often described as more elegant than the robust styles of South Australia, although the style of wine ranges from lighter elegant Pinot Noirs to medium and full bodied Shiraz and Cabernets. Rutherglen is renowned for its distinctive Madeira-like fortified wines such as Liqueur Muscat. (en)
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