Clouds on the wine horizon? They wish. As if to demonstrate that Australia currently has water on the brain, the inch of rain that fell like manna from Santa Claus on the Saturday before Christmas Day was writ large in newspaper headline joy. At least until temperatures returned to furnace levels on New Year’s Eve, for just a short while you didn’t have to shower with a bucket to keep the flower beds watered or worry that your dog might get a nasty bite from a thirsty snake.

Under the hard glare of an unremitting Australian sun, water available for irrigation in the Murray-Darling basin has improved to around a fifth of normal. Hardly great news to the beleaguered wine growers who rely for their livelihood on the irrigation waters of the Murray River that winds through the vineyards of South East Australia; but better than zilch. Yet while the citrus groves are dying in South Australia’s Riverland, the vineyards still look green and healthy. The big companies that own or run them have been buying up water rights to keep Australia’s big brands alive – at a cost.

Others will be bringing truckloads of grapes from Western Australia to cope with shortages in supply. This isn’t new. One of Australia’s great strengths has been its ability to blend wine across different regions. What is likely to have a significant impact on a wine industry whose exports have grown from $360 million (£156m) to $3 billion (£1.3b) a year in just over a decade, is if drought-affected vineyards become a permanent victim of climate change.

Old timers remember drought like this. It happened in 1944, and again in 1973. They’ll also remind you that many of Australia’s best wines came from vineyards that were ‘dry-grown’, in other words relied purely on any rainfall that arrived, or didn’t, by the grace of god. Invocations of the past explain why today Australia’s wine community is in two minds about the effects of the drought.

For sure, the latest forecast for an even lower crop in 2008 than the exceptionally small 2007 vintage looks bad. But many of Australia’s ‘cooler’, quality wine regions like Adelaide Hills, Tasmania, Margaret River and Clare Valley are standing up well to the drought. And unnaturally low yields in the irrigated ‘engine room’ of Australian wine production could yet bring a leap in quality.

One unwelcome cloud that recently flickered across the horizon was a speech made by Tesco’s wine guru Dan Jago in Melbourne, who took the Australians to task for producing wines he called too alcoholic at 13 – 14 per cent and lacked character. Mr. Jago was seen by many Aussies to be biting the hand that feeds Tesco, but only because he was delivering a bitter pill by asking for more personality in their brands. He was right. Many of Australia’s everyday brands have become boring compared to Chile, Argentina, not to mention what’s starting to come out of southern France, Spain and Italy.

Yet, as Michael Hill-Smith, of the Adelaide Hills winery Shaw and Smith, puts it, ‘contrary to the stereotype, not all Australian wines are big, high in alcohol and oak’. Aromatic rieslings from Clare, Eden and Frankland Valleys continue to grow in stature. Lighter Hunter Valley and Margaret River Semillons and Adelaide Hills and Tasmanian sauvignons are on the up. There is a move away from porty reds to more elegant, refreshing and drinkable shiraz and cabernet sauvignon along with a growing number of ‘burgundian’ pinot noirs from Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula and Tasmania, and the growing popularity of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian wine styles.

If the story appears unnecessarily gloomy, it’s largely because of growing pains aggravated by an overdose of gloom at the prospect of Australia losing its place to France as the UK’s number one importing country. But so what? Wine isn’t all about quantity and these difficult times could be just the opportunity needs for Australia to demonstrate, as Australia Day looms next Saturday, to continue to re-focus on the strength in depth of variety and quality emerging from its endlessly fascinating wine scene. That would give us all something to celebrate.

Something For the Weekend 19 January 2008

Under a Fiver

2006 Domaine de L’Olivette Blanc, Vin de Pays des Coteaux de Cabrerissse, £4.99, Waitrose.

Made using organic grapes from a southern French blend of mainly grenache blanc with marsanne and bourboulenc, this is a vibrantly fresh and appley dry white with an intense fruit flavour and a real zing to its appealing fruit quality,

Under a Tenner

2007 Cono Sur Visión Gewürztraminer, Block Las Colmenas, Casablanca Valley, £7.99, or buy any 2 Chilean wines = £6.39, Majestic, plus till 4 February.

Displaying its potential for aromatic white wines, Chile’s Pacific-influenced Casablanca Valley is the source for this refreshingly dry, rose petal scented example of the Alsace grape variety with its exotic Turkish Delight flavours and juicy acidity.

Splash Out

2003 Château Beaumont, £12.95, Berry Bros & Rudd, London SW1 (0870 900 4300 ; bbr@bbr.com).

From the torrid ‘Californian’ vintage of 2003, this sleek, modern cru bourgeois claret from the Haut-Médoc shows modern, vanilla and coffee bean aromas with an instantly likeable fruit richness made palatable and well-rounded by maturation in oak.