In Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, cleanskin wine is a term for wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

 whose label

Wine label

Wine labels are important sources of information for consumers since they tell the type and origin of the wine. The label is often the only resource a buyer has for evaluating the wine before purchasing it...

 does not indicate the winery

Winery

A winery is a building or property that produces wine, or a business involved in the production of wine, such as a wine company. Some wine companies own many wineries. Besides wine making equipment, larger wineries may also feature warehouses, bottling lines, laboratories, and large expanses of...

 or the winemaker

Winemaker

A winemaker or vintner is a person engaged in winemaking. They are generally employed by wineries or wine companies, where their work includes:*Cooperating with viticulturists...

's name. Instead, cleanskin labels usually only show the grape variety and the year of bottling, as well as other information required by Australian law - alcohol

Alcohol

In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....

 content, volume, additives and standard drink information.

Cleanskin wines are typically sold cheaply in dozen lots for home consumption. They may be branded wines that were originally sold at a higher price and re-labeled as cleanskins, or they may be wines produced for the purpose of being sold as cleanskins. Consequently, the quality of various batches of cleanskin wine can vary significantly.

Cleanskin wine was introduced to Australia in the early 2000s as a way for the wine industry to cope with a massive oversupply of wine, and a resulting drop in prices. As a result, wine consumption in Australia has greatly increased as of 2006. Also, the price of cleanskin wine has dropped to around or below the price of beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

 or even bottled water

Bottled water

Bottled water is drinking water packaged in plastic or glass water bottles. Bottled water may be carbonated or not...

.

The word "cleanskin" comes from the Australian term for unbranded

Livestock branding

Livestock branding is a technique for marking livestock so as to identify the owner. Originally, livestock branding only referred to a hot brand for large stock, though the term is now also used to refer to other alternative techniques such as freeze branding...

cattle, and is also used to refer to undercover police agents.