Colin Free is a wine grape grower from Lake Boga, near Swan Hill and said producers there are hoping Moscato will put the region on the map.
This year Swan Hill will host the first National Moscato Challenge as part of an effort to educate consumers about the area, ABC Rural reports.
“A lot of the different wine regions in Australia try and hang their hat on something,” Free says.
“The Barossa's pretty good at Shiraz, Coonawarra's pretty good at Cabernet. But the one thing we probably can do better than the other regions, speaking on behalf of the warmer regions, is the Moscato style of wines, because the hotter the weather, the better muscat style flavour that results in the Moscato wines.”
First produced in the 1980s, Free believes there's still a lot of demand for Moscato from both wineries and consumers.
“It's a very big product and very important to the industry,” he says.
“There's still room to grow and we're fairly excited about the potential of the style.”