1980 yielded good-quality red wines from the Barossa and most of Victoria, and very fine reds from West Australia.

While the majority of the regions in south-east Australia were blessed by sufficient rainfall in the growing season, the summer of 1980 became very hot, and unbearably so for the foremost southern districts such as Coonawarra, the Yarra Valley and Margaret River. It was the first hot year for many growers in the cooler regions who had great difficulty to cope with the fast rate at which fruit ripened and then began to dry out.