The year is 2035. Your robot hoover is now effectively moonlighting as a sommelier, trundling across the living room with a wine gummy engineered to your exact taste, mood, and current cortisol levels. How sublime.
Sadly, no. But don’t be disappointed; as useful as that sounds, the reality is infinitely tastier (and may be much closer than you think).
Picture shelves of Australian drops made from varieties native to Greece, Portugal, southern Italy and Cyprus; wine lists organised by ABV as readily as colour; and the standard 750ml bottle finally losing its monopoly. Some of this is still being trialled. Quite a lot of it is already being poured. Time to learn some new grapes.
Grapes of the future
Australian wine has spent decades in a committed relationship with three French grapes: Shiraz, Chardonnay, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Between them, they have historically accounted for as much as 70% of the national crush. That grip may be loosening, but only just. Even in 2026 (a sobering year for Australian red-wine growers, when Shiraz fell below a 20% share for the first time in 15 years), the big three still accounted for more than half of all grapes that went into tank.
But in the warm inland regions especially, rising temperatures and erratic seasons are testing that fidelity. Australia isn’t breaking up with France, but it has started seeing other grapes.
You may already have met a few of our new paramours: Fiano, Vermentino, Nero d’Avola, and Montepulciano. Raised around the warmer reaches of the Mediterranean, they’re the kind of grapes that keep their cool in the heat and can deliver the brighter, mid‑weight reds and whites that we Aussies are increasingly choosing to drink.
If you want a head start, grab a bottle of Dalwood Estate Fiano 2025, recently crowned the inaugural Fiano of the Year by the 2027 Halliday Wine Companion. Prefer red? Cupitt Estate’s Montepulciano and Brash Higgins’ NDV Nero d’Avola are also regarded as local benchmarks. Call it future-proofing your palate.
Expect to hear more from Portuguese favourites Arinto and Touriga Nacional too, but the most intriguing contender for the 2035 dinner table is Xynisteri.
This little-known Cypriot white successfully survived a 49°C Riverland heatwave with barely any sunburn. When Barossa’s Paulmara Estate released Australia’s first commercial bottling in 2025, the 450-odd bottles sold out in a flash. Not a bad Australian debut.
Less alcohol, not no alcohol
The wine industry has spent the past few years talking about alcohol‑free wine like we’re all one lab breakthrough away from giving up the good stuff entirely. That future isn’t impossible, but anyone who’s battled their way through a warm glass of zero-alc knows we’re not quite there yet.
The more immediate shift is happening in the middle. Wine Australia expects lower‑alcohol wine to grow faster than alcohol‑free and overtake it by 2028. Instead of stripping alcohol out completely, producers are learning to make wines around 7-9% ABV that still have texture, flavour, and, crucially, the basic will to live.
This isn’t exactly revolutionary. German Riesling, Moscato d’Asti, and some styles of Vinho Verde have been delivering serious pleasure at modest alcohol levels for generations. What’s changing is the expectation that lower strength should be limited to a few traditionally lighter styles.
By 2035, alcohol percentage could be as relevant to choosing a bottle as region or grape. Not because everyone’s gone sober, but because a 14.5% Shiraz is a fairly blunt instrument when you just want a cheeky glass over lunch and still have plans afterwards.
The future of wine may not be entirely sober; it may just be better paced. There is also the small matter of the bottle itself.
New bottles, please
The standard 750ml bottle is built on a rather specific social assumption: that two people want roughly three glasses each, of the exact same wine, on the exact same night. That made sense when a bottle was the default accompaniment to dinner. It makes far less sense in an era of smaller households, lower consumption and a growing appetite for more variety.
Then there’s the environmental reality. Heavy glass bottles are energy-intensive to manufacture, punishingly heavy to transport, and generate a disproportionate amount of the wine industry’s total emissions. Unsurprisingly, Australian researchers are already testing paper, biopolymer, and flat recycled‑plastic formats for premium wine. Meanwhile, smaller bottles, cans, and casks are fast moving beyond novelty into the mainstream.
None of this needs to mean drinking worse wine. A bag-in-box can keep wine fresh for weeks longer than a half-empty bottle with the cork haphazardly shoved back into it. The real hurdle is psychological. If you need help working through any residual goon trauma, A Glass Of packages independent Australian wines into very civilised 200ml pouches. For the more committed, Gonzo Wine’s Splishy Splashy Tinta Barocca offers three litres of soft, juicy Riverland red in a box that I can confirm does not suck.
By 2035, expensive wine will likely remain reassuringly familiar; ritual is remarkably difficult to recycle. But for everything we open without ceremony, the shelf will be far less predictable, and reaching for a can, a single-serve pour, or a designer box may no longer feel like compromising on what’s inside.
The future of wine won’t be one miraculous new region or grape, but rather a broadening of the mind and a gradual dismantling of all the things we assumed a good bottle “had” to be.