Wine Sales

McFarland's is proud to provide a select range of quality Australian wines to the Chinese market. Read below to see what makes Australian wines, and our Royal Parade and Highbank wines in particular, so special.

Australian Wine

Australia's wine industry has grown remarkably in its short history of just 220 years. As Australia has no native grape varieties suitable for producing wine, grapes were imported from Europe soon after the first European settlers arrived, and were planted in a few small experimental vineyards. The first known successful wine grape production in Australia was in 1791, when a few bunches of grapes were cut from vines in the Governor's garden in what is now Sydney's Macquarie Street, one of the main business centres of Australia. Encouraged by that success, settlers in the early 1800s spread out from Sydney to establish vineyards in New South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia, Victoria and South Australia.

Much of the wine produced was exported to the United Kingdom where even in the early 1800s it won awards for quality. Since then Australian wine has become internationally renowned for its variety and unique flavours, and has continued to regularly win awards at international wine shows around the world. Today Australia is consistently ranked among the top ten wine producers in the world and exports more than half of its domestic production.

Australia is a large country with over sixty different wine regions in a tremendous variety of terrains and climates, low altitude and high altitude, cool and hot, coastal and mountainous and desert. The combination of these uniquely Australian conditions with well known and loved European grape varieties is what gives Australian wine its distinctive character.

Coonawarra

Coonawarra has long been recognised as one of Australia's and the world’s premium wine producing regions and takes its name from the Aboriginal word 'honeysuckle'. Situated in the Limestone Coast area of South Australia, it is a cool climate region, influenced by maritime heating and cooling from the Southern Ocean. The upwelling of cold water from Antarctica brings fresh cool air to the region during the late summer afternoons, creating ideal ripening weather of warm days and cool nights – the perfect combination for developing the intense varietal characteristics for which Coonawarra is renowned.

The unique terra rossa (“red earth”) soil of Coonawarra is the most famous vineyard soil in Australia and possibly the world. Twenty seven kilometres long and nearly two kilometres wide, this select area of extraordinary and extremely valuable soil, with its unique ingredients, has achieved world acclaim for the exceptional wine it creates.

Terra rossa soil is considered the best soil in the world for growing Bordeaux varietal grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. The premium quality wines produced in Highbank’s Coonawarra vineyards are outstanding examples of the refined and elegant wines that can be produced from this unique environment, and we are very proud to offer them to you.

Highbank Family Reserve

Highbank’s flagship Family Reserve wine is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, hand-pruned and hand-picked from vines grown organically on Highbank’s small artisanal vineyard. Complex with lovely varietal characters and perfect balance, this wine is frequently offered on the wine lists of some of the best restaurants in Australia, and deservedly so.