Roger Dion, a French specialist of wine geography and history expressed the idea that the “tyranny of the natural conditions” were more easily observable in the new worlds than in the old continent. Actually, in colonizing Australia, some Europeans brought with them the desire of producing and consuming wine as a part of civilization. But, they very early realized the existence of obstacles that would prevent them from such enterprise, especially concerning the production of French types of wine so celebrated among British colonists. In this paper, I intend to demonstrate that the local geographical conditions forced the wine pioneers to adapt their agricultural and vine-growing models and consequently to develop their own idea of a local wine industry. However, the definition of this model has been debated among local winegrowers and wine professionals through history. Writings of the wine pioneers of Colonial Australia (in published books, newspaper articles, agricultural journals and private records) show an important care about the possibilities offered by this new land and the awareness of insurmountable obstacles of nature. Eventually, this paper, through a transnational approach, suggests the possibility of a non-formulated idea of terroir crossing oceans from Europe to the Antipodean.