It was the worst hailstorm in living memory. On 11 November this year a thunderous tempest of cyclonic winds and ice ripped through the vineyards of South Australia’s Riverland, then rampaged over the border, wreaking havoc among the vast swathes of vines planted on both the Victorian and New South Wales sides of the Murray River around Mildura (the town is marked just above the Murray Darling label on the map below, taken from the current, 7th edition of the World Atlas of Wine and included in our maps section).
These two vast inland irrigated regions account for around 50%...