It can’t all be blamed on “critter” labels, but that’s a good place to start.

Australian winemakers lead the world in the shameless appropriation of cute animal images on wine labels, and, for a time, Yellow Tail’s kangaroo seemed poised to take over the wine world. Wine snobs went into indignant orbit, but the buying public obligingly sucked down boatloads of flabby chardonnay and feckless shiraz — conveniently forgetting that it was a powerhouse shiraz (the Aussie equivalent of the Rhône’s syrah), Penfolds Grange, that had put the country on the world wine map in the first place.

The critter phenomenon continues unabated, and there’s even a website, critterwines.com, that can help the consumer choose a wine based on a preference for anything from aardvarks to zebras. But a number of factors seem to be contributing to a kind of renaissance in the Australian wine industry, until recently victim of its own quantity-based success. Several seasons of drought may have had an impact. Also, replanted shiraz vines — many of which were ripped out in the ’80s to make way for presumably more popular grapes — are coming to maturity. And then, there may have been a change of heart on the part of winemakers — at least that’s what Omniboire, always a fan of the underdog (though not necessarily on a label), was hoping. Fair dinkum, mate.