REGIONAL IDENTIFICATION

Identification of our region, along with all other Australian wine regions, is formalised in the Geographic Indication or GI, system.

What follows, in this section of our website, under the various headings of “Executive Summary”, “Textual description”, etc, is our submission to the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation (AWBC), in late 2001, to have our region declared an official wine region under the GI of Shoalhaven Coast.

Click here to download the entire submission.(pdf 168kb)

We were officially declared Australia's 95th wine region in August 2002.

Maps and other graphic materials included in the original GI submission, have been omitted here for reasons of website management.

Since our submission new vineyards have developed in our region and our growth continues today with three more vineyards planned for the near future.

A Geographical Indication (GI) is an official description of an Australian wine zone, region or sub-region. It takes the form of a textual description (ie a list of grid references, map coordinates, roads and natural landmarks which can be traced to outline the regional boundary) along with a map. Its main purpose is to protect the use of the regional name under international law, limiting its use to describe wines produced from winegrape fruit grown within that GI.

Zones do not have any particular qualifying attributes and may be a State, or a larger area such as South Eastern Australia. They may also be a larger wine-growing area, such as the Hunter, which is then subdivided into regions and sub-regions.

Regions must be single tracts of land. They must contain at least five winegrape vineyards of at least five hectares (12 acres) each, and the region, in total, must produce not less than 500 tonnes annually. The region must be measurably discrete from adjoining regions and have homogeneity of features important to wine grape growing, such as climate, soils, grape variety etc. The name selected for the GI must be relevant to the location and history of the region.

Sub-regions are discrete areas within larger existing regions that meet the same criteria as a region and can therefore be recognised as separate winegrape growing entities within the region.

A Geographic Indication can be likened to the Appellation naming system used in Europe (eg Bordeaux, Burgundy) but is much less restrictive in terms of viticultural and winemaking practices. In fact the only restriction in the GI system is that wine that carries the regional name must consist of a minimum of 85% of fruit from that region. This protects the integrity of the label and safeguards the consumer.

The use of Geographical Indications in Australia commenced in 1993 to enable Australia to fulfil its Agreements with the European Community. This came about in response to Australia's increasing wine exports to EC countries during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Once determined the GI name is entered onto a Register of Protected Names and can not be used for any wine related purpose other than to describe the GI, or wine from that GI.