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Australian wine used to be a bit of a joke. In the early 1970s British comics Monty Python had a routine in which crazy hybrids like Nuits St Wagga Wagga and Hobart Muddy ('this is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding') were derided mercilessly. It seemed pretty hilarious then - but utterly dated now.

To much of the world, the idea of Aussies making decent wine may have been laughable 30 years ago, and unlikely even as recently as 1980. But at the beginning of the new century it would be as absurd to make fun of Australian wine as it would be to laugh at the French for an inability to play football.

In the last five years Australia has become one of the top ten wine producers in the world. Between 1984 and 1998 exports increased massively - and are expected to further increase by 50% in the first years of the new century. Australia now produces every conceivable wine style, from heavily-oaked Chardonnay to exquisite botrytised Riesling, and from full-bodied Shiraz to lighter Rhone-style blends.

Winemakers on this extraordinary continent (the size of the United States but with a population the size of Greater London) may yet change the rules of engagement in the eternal battle between old world (character) and new world (consistency). Australian techniques are used throughout the world, from viticultural methods like sophisticated trellis and pruning systems, to the latest winemaking technology. The Australians invented the concept of the flying winemaker - and graduates of top Australian wine schools like Roseworthy in the Barossa can be found in wineries from Italy to India. There are few Bordeaux winemakers who wouldn't recognise their influence.

Wine has been made in Australia since the first convict arrived in New South Wales at the end of the 18th century. Today most of the country's 1,000-odd vineyards are concentrated in the south-east, but vines are grown wherever oddities in climate will allow. There is a vineyard in the oasis of Alice Springs, deep in the Northern Territory. Clare Valley, between barren grazing land and the true outback, produces some of Australia's finest Rieslings. In the 1960s Margaret River in Western Australia was the first wine region in the country set up as the result of scientific research, and new wine-growing regions are still emerging - Langhorne Creek in South Australia, Wrattonbully, Robe, Cowra, Sunbury.

Eighty per cent of wine produced in Australia comes from four companies - the largest of which, Southcorp, accounts for 35 per cent of that total. Other major companies are BRL Hardy, Beringer Blass, Orlando Wyndham and McWilliams, which between them are responsible for the lion's share of Australia's output. It's too early to say whether such consolidation is a good or a bad thing in the long term. Certainly these conglomerates are making clear they are interested in quality rather than bulk, and groups like Mildara Blass stress how keen they are to promote regional wines - terroir is the new evangelism.

Australia today may produce only a fraction of Italy's output, but nothing stands still here. Under 'Strategy 2025' and the planting of 40,000 new hectares of vineyard, production should double within 30 years. Strategy 2025 is the name given to Australia's plan to be number one producer in the world within the next 25 years. Projections already indicate that even at an unaccelerated rate Australia would improve from being the world's ninth biggest producer to becoming the sixth. Whether quality will keep pace with quantity remains to be seen.

Adam Lechmere

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Rosemount Hill of Gold Shiraz, Mudgee, NSW, 1998, at £10.48 per bottle