The Winery Paterson's Gundagai Vineyard of Big Rivers of Nouvelle-Galles du Sud

Discovering the wine region of Big Rivers

Big Rivers is a GI (Geographical Indication) created in 1996 which refers to several Australian wine regions in western NewSouthWales and northwestern Victoria. The entire southwestern quarter of New South Wales is covered by the zone, whose name is a reference to the famous Murray and Darling rivers and the lesser-known Lachlan and Murrumbidgee Rivers (the latter means Big Water in the local Aboriginal language). Big Rivers measures 650 kilometers (400 miles) across, and produces around 75 percent of New South Wales' wine, and is one of Australia's most prolific wine-producing areas. Riverina is the largest of Big Rivers' four wine regions.

This vast, almost perfectly square area covers 4000 square miles (10,360 square km) of central-southern New South Wales. It is a reliable source of many millions of hectoliters of wine every Vintage, most of which is from high-yielding vines and is destined for sale in bulk. At the centre of Riverina is the well-known wine production town of Griffith. The second-largest region is Murray Darling, which stretches from the Victorian border with South Australia in the west, to Balranald in NSW in the east.

Perricoota occupies a southern enclave of New South Wales and is small compared to its huge Big Rivers neighbors. Finally, Swan Hill, like Murray Darling, straddles the New South Wales-Victoria border. It is difficult to usefully describe the growing conditions of such a large area, but the general pattern involves a continental Climate, hot and Dry with low rainfall. This leaves Big Rivers relatively free of fungal diseases that might otherwise reduce the region's all-important yields.