To develop a taste for wine, keep tasting — and write down as many specifics as you can when you find a wine you like. Is it red or white? What grape? What region? And so on, so that over time you can see a profile of the particular qualities that please you.

THE CANBERRA district is the talk of the wine world after a local red picked up one of the country's most prestigious wine awards. Collector Wines scooped the pool at the Sydney Royal Wine Show, picking up four trophies including the coveted gong for best red wine of show.

THE Australian winegrape crush declined in size in 2010 for the second consecutive year, with the 1.53 million tonne harvest down 12 per cent on 2009. This means the total annual crush is almost 300,000t less than it was two years ago, according to figures released in the Winemakers' Federation of Australia 2010 vintage report.

AS Australia's oldest wine-growing region, the Hunter Valley blends tradition and history with innovation and forward-thinking. Recognised as the world leader in the production of dry white wines, the Hunter's low-alcohol, age-worthy semillon is widely regarded as unique in Australia.

SALES of NSW wines have grown 15 per cent in the past year, yet many Sydneysiders are still refusing to buy them. While sales of NSW bottled wine rose $10.2 million to $69 million in the year to December, sales of NSW wine accounted for just 7 per cent of bottles sold, according to the NSW Wine Strategy.

Now that the harvesters have been safely returned to the shed and pickers have long since moved on, attention has turned to evaluating the size and quality of the 2010 winegrape harvest.

Despite being described by a panel of wine buffs as ''excellent lighter fluid'', Casella Wines' Yellow Tail brand transformed a small family business into one of Australia's largest wine companies in less than a decade.

Fosters has unveiled Treasury Wine Estates, the umbrella branding for its new demerged wine business. “The announcement today does not pre-empt any outcome for our demerger, nor does it represent fundamental change in our business model. It does, however, represent the acceleration of a cultural change for those of us working in the wine business as we return to a dedicated focus on viticulture, wine making and the marketing and sale of one of the world’s most outstanding portfolios,” said Fosters CEO Ian Johnston.

For Australia's wine industry it is the final frontier. But cracking the enormously lucrative Chinese market, with its 200 million customers, has so far proved elusive.

Vineyards occupy a tiny fragment of the Australian landmass: less than 0.02 per cent of the continent. Their psychological importance, though, is wildly disproportionate to their size. The unparalleled export success of Australian wine over the past two decades has won more friends for the nation than sporting conquest, iron ore or marsupials on yellow road signs.