If being three hours behind New York weren't enough for California to put up with, it seems that Australia's assault on the American wine market is heating up. The L.A. Times has an article about how Australian vintners wants to "conquer" California winemakers. Gothamist like this observation about the differences between Americans and Australians, both wine makers and drinkers:

American vintners take themselves and their wine very seriously, largely selling wine through snob appeal. The Australians, who drink three times as much per capita as Americans, aren't so precious about pulling a cork. "We don't take ourselves too seriously," says John Larchet, an Australian wine importer with offices in Melbourne and San Diego. "It is very common for us to say, 'God, that's a good drink.' You'd never hear an American say that about wine."

Gothamist must be hanging out with latent Australians (maybe we're latently Australian - boozy and bad drunks). We've mentioned Australian Penfolds wine before but we did have a nice California wine, Sonoma Cutrer Chardonnay, tonight. The inexpensive Australian wine Yellow Tail intrigues us, if only because there's a panoply of jokes to be made. Also, the drinking instruction for the Yellow Tail Chardonnay mirror the current approach to life: "Drink now and enjoy until 2004."

Compare and contrast the Wine Institute (the Voice for California Wine) and the National Wine Centre of Australia.

Gothamist on NY vs. LA and LA's Attack Envy.