South Eastern Australia

Pinot Noir

Felons, running roughshod over London town, were menacing good people, wreaking havoc and, caught by the scores, clogging every jail in the kingdom. This created a civic dilemma of colossal proportions. Meanwhile, two oceans away, a newly claimed and virgin continent beckoned. Yet the voyage was endless and brutal, the rewards meager to nil. The savagely elegant solution: punishment by transportation. A list of 19 Crimes was drawn. Conviction meant a long and often dangerous journey to a distant and unknown land. From the late 1700s to the late 1800s approximately 162,000 men and women were transported via prison ships to a desolate island for a violation of one of 19 Crimes. Australia, thus, was born. 19 Crimes wine celebrates Australia's infamous origin, and the stories of these men and women convicts-turned-colonists