AUS: Did you know the government makes wine?

(ABC) - If you wander through the hospital-like halls of a 1980s building in the Western Australian town of Bunbury, past offices signposted for dairy and grain research, you will come to a pokey little laboratory.

The racks of jars and beakers lining the walls suggest you’ve entered a university chemistry lab, but the two dozen wine glasses drying neatly near a corner sink is revealing.

This is the Bunbury base for the Department of Agriculture and Food’s wine research, home to Western Australia’s only Brachetto and a number of other alternate varieties of wine.

“Alternative varieties have definitely got a niche in the market and I think that niche is going to grow, particularly with Generation Y wine consumers,” says the department’s research officer, Richard Fennessy.

He is perhaps the most hands-on member involved with the program, and a staunch advocate of alternative varieties and their growing significance within the young wine market.

“They’re looking for something different. They don’t want to drink the same varieties that mum and dad are drinking - they want something a little bit trendy, a little bit hip, and I think a lot of these varieties tick those boxes.”

Producing fine wine is not something many would associate with the Department of Agriculture, whose work often falls into more traditional fields of on-farm extension.