(WSJ) - CAN YOU NAME the world’s greatest fine-wine regions? This wine connoisseurs’ parlor game usually ends up in a heated discussion of the merits of, say, a velvet-textured Napa Cabernet over the brooding, peppery power of northern Rhône Syrah.

Inevitably, the first to be mentioned are the great regions of France and Italy (Bordeaux, Burgundy, Piedmont and Tuscany), closely followed by the Mosel in Germany and Champagne. This usually leads to another discussion: Can Champagne ever be great? Let’s not go there.

The common theme that arises from this game is that for a region to qualify as truly great it has to have a cool climate. What one doesn’t equate with greatness is desert and heat, which is where Australian wine—or rather the perception of Australian wine—falls down.

“The assumption has always been that Australia is a very hot desert country that can’t produce Pinot Noir,” says Brian Croser, owner of South Australian winery Tapanappa. “But in Australia we have a rich pool of cool-climate areas that are not fully appreciated.”

Mr. Croser knows a thing or two about Australian wine. The former chief winemaker at Hardys, he caused a stir in the late ’70s when he founded Petaluma winery and began the whole process of matching grape varieties to certain regions.

In 1976 he founded a course in wine science at the then Riverina College of Advanced Education, which later became the School of Agricultural and Wine Sciences at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales, now one of Australia’s largest wine schools.

Today he wants to alter perceptions again. Having successfully introduced the concept of regionality into Australian wine, he now believes its future lies in the country’s cool-climate areas.

Going from west to east, he points to regions like the Margaret River, the Adelaide Hills, Eden Valley, Coonawarra, Mornington Peninsula, the Yarra Valley, Gippsland and King Valley, which he says can produce the sort of fine wine that can really get Australia talked about again.

It’s been a long time coming. Australia burst onto the international wine scene in the late 1980s with names like Jacob’s Creek and Yellow Tail as it became the first port of call for British supermarkets looking for good, affordable wines. By the late 1990s, the rest of the New World had caught up and Australia found itself undercut by South America, South Africa and California’s Central Valley.