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Victoria, Australia’s second-smallest state, is located in the southeastern corner of the country, bounded on the south and east by the Indian Ocean, Bass Strait, and Tasman Sea. New South Wales is to the north, South Australia to the south. Melbourne is Victoria’s capital and most populous city, and Australia’s second most populous city after Sydney. Victoria’s wine industry started slowly in the 1840s, followed the gold boom of the 1850s, and continued to expand for several decades. In the 1890s Victoria produced over half of Australia’s wines. Then phylloxera infested many of the growing regions and a depression hit; the wine industry faltered well into the Twentieth Century. Victoria’s viticultural revival gathered strength in the 1970s and 1980s and today it’s the third most important wine state after South Australia and New South Wales. Under the Australian Geographic Indications system, Victoria officially has six major zones and nineteen regions. In the Northwest corner of the state, farthest from Melbourne, is the North West Victoria Zone. eHH Here you’ll find the highly productive regions of Murray Darling and Swan Hill, which rely on irrigation from Murray River water and which produce large quantities of inexpensive but decent quality wines. Farther south is the Western Victoria Zone with three regions (east to west)—Grampians, Pyrenees, and Henty. Moving east and slightly north there is the Central Victoria Zone with, east to west, the benndigo, Goulburn Valley, and Central Victorian High Country regions. Southward, circling Melbourne, is the Port Phillip Zone, which is divided into five regions—Geelong, Macedon Ranges, Mornington Peninsula, Sunbury, and the most famous of all, Yarra Valley. Just east is Gippsland, which is both a zone and region. The sixth zone is the North East Victoria Zone, which hosts the Rutherglen, King Valley, and Alpine Valleys regions. Victoria grapes can make their way into wines designated as South Eastern Australia, a gigantic zone that covers three states and parts of two others.