When a recent cover feature in a heavyweight U.S. weekly magazine assures us that New World vintages -- especially those from Down Under -- are giving the French (and Californians) a run for their money, then it's safe to say that Australian wine has arrived. But we in Tokyo have known that for a long time.
We have a long-serving specialist online mail-order service (Village Cellars). We find bottles from Coonawarra and Hunter Valley in our street-corner convenience stores. And we have a clutch of wine bars -- Uluru 125; followed by El Vino; and, more recently, the extravagantly named Underground Mr. Zoogunzoo -- that won't pour anything if it wasn't fermented in the Antipodes.
And since last December, we have Arossa, a stylish restaurant-cum-wine bar tucked away on the outskirts of Shibuya. It is the spiritual successor to another Aussie-only wine bar, the well-liked The Rocks, which occupied this same site for a few felicitous years.