Would you believe it's Australia's wine industry that has award-winning vineyards in Bordeaux and Burgundy, in Verona and Tuscany, taking notes on how to bring critically-acclaimed, affordable wines to the vast global market?

Well believe it. Truth be told, this isn't shocking news to many of the critics who drive the global wine market, nor is it to many of the world's more well-heeled palates. Certainly this is not news in the UK, where Australian brands have been displacing many French staples.

The Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation and the Australian Wine Export Council, two industry-funded organizations that oversee the country's export program and regulate the quality of the product that is shipped, report that wine exports have grown in value from AU$10 million (5.7M euros/US$ 5.08M) in 1985 to AU$ 840 million (477.5M euros/US$ 427M) in 1998. The industry achieved its objective of reaching AU$ 1.5 billion (900M euros/US$ 800M) in export sales by the end of 2000, and it has set the ambitious goal of AU$ 2.5 billion (1.4B euros/US$ 1.3B) in export sales by 2025. Current growth projections suggest that the end result may be considerably higher.

Currently, Australia exports over 27% of its total wine production. Going forward, the industry objective is to move 50% of the country's product overseas by the year 2025.

The Australian Wine Industry's auspicious ascent comes at a time when global analysts are predicting a trend of consolidation in what has become an increasingly fragmented industry, what with the emergence of brands from cultures as disparate as China and South Africa. Last year, Foster's Brewing Group spearheaded the consolidation movement with the ambitious purchase of Beringer Wine Estates (US) for the sum of AU$ 2.6 billion (1.5B euros/US$ 1.3B).

Wine is not necessarily what one thinks of when mulling the Foster's brand. The typical consumer is apt to associate the Melbourne-based company with its eponymous beer brand and its pithy, exported tagline: "Foster's: Australian for beer."

The Beringer acquisition, however, is not Foster's first foray into the wine world. In 1996, it purchased Mildara Blass, a leading Australian wine brand, for AU$ 600 million (341M euros/US$ 305M). The motivation for the move into wine stemmed from the maturing of Foster's beer market: while its brands dominated the domestic market and made Foster's the fourth largest brewer in the world, there seemed little room for further growth. In search of another growth engine to propel the company into the twenty-first century, Foster's turned to the growing premium wine market, and given the high multiples on the prices of wine companies, the company determined that there was tremendous room for growth in that niche of the beverage industry.

For that growth to be actualized, Foster's would have to rely heavily on the export market. After all, Australia is not a country that is overrun with people; dominating its own market (which in itself is no easy task in light of stiff competition from the BRL Hardy and Southcorp brands) would not suffice. Rather, Foster's would have to move on the overseas momentum of the Blass brands. Ideally, they would have to channel that momentum into the brass ring of all markets, the US, where 185 million adults serve as potential customers.

With the Blass brands surging throughout a well-established distribution network in Europe and growing rapidly in the voluminous US market, Foster's was able to generate enough capital to make the Beringer acquisition possible.

Nick Thornton is a freelance writer based in Stamford, Connecticut.