Decades ago, having failed my driving test again and again, I moved to Australia, where I failed it some more. Eventually, after yet another circuit of Sydney's scariest hills, the tester had to admit I had passed, but made me do a rerun to make sure. Let loose on the roads at last, I drove to South Australia, which is much further than it looks on the map. Nor does the map show the swarm of locusts outside West Wyalong, the broken accelerator pedal, the fractured exhaust manifold or the frog army crossing the highway. But it was worth it to reach the Barossa Valley and its wine.
The now-famous valley then meant nothing in Britain, and in Australia it was best known for its 19th-century German settlers. But the first winery I came across, Yalumba, looked like an English public school and had been founded by Samuel Smith, the Victorian brewer. The wines were only okayish, but the heat, the smells and the solidity of the buildings were unforgettable.
Nowadays, when much Australian wine is in big corporate hands, Yalumba prides itself on being the oldest family-owned winery in the country. It has teamed up with some others (d'Arenberg, Jim Barry, De Bortoli, Brown Brothers, Campbells, Henschke, Howard Park, McWilliams, Tahbilk, Tyrrell's and Wakefield) to form "Australia's First Families of Wine". The immodesty is justified by the integrity of their wines.
When I braved the frog army to reach the Barossa, nobody paid much attention to the ancient shiraz vines dotted around the valley. It wasn't until the late 1980s that winemakers began to make dark, chocolatey blockbusters from these gnarled centurions. The most famous was St Hallett's Old Block Shiraz, a cult that spawned many copies. I drank a 1990 from my cellar last week: the bluster had given way to ethereal loveliness. With more minerality it would have challenged the best northern-Rhône syrahs (the French name for shiraz).
St Hallett was snapped up by the beverage industry; but Yalumba and other local "first families" produce splendidly individualistic shiraz - without charging the crazy prices demanded by the boutique wineries set up in St Hallett's wake. Try them with roast beef.
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LIQUID HUNCHES
d'Arenberg d'Arry's Original Shiraz Grenache 2006 (£9.20)
Pure fruity lusciousness (bibendum-wine.co.uk)
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Yalumba Hand-Picked Shiraz Viognier 2006 (£16.50)
A textbook Rhône lookalike, lacking only the elusive minerality that would put it on the top tier (henningswine.co.uk)
Jim Barry McRae Wood Shiraz 2005 (£19.95)
A classic, deep, dark flavour-bomb with 15.5% alcohol and a long life ahead (hailshamcellars.com)