“That generic reputation has created a problem for the country because partly we are dependent on heavy growth in the low end of the market,” said Kym Anderson, a wine economist at the University of Adelaide. “Whereas there is a lot of very high-quality wine here that struggles to find markets in the U.S. because people aren’t very familiar with those particular labels.”

These troubles have been compounded by a recent rise in the exchange rate of the Australian dollar, which went to near parity against the United States dollar last year from about half that value in 2002, erasing profit margins on many wines.

While Australian wine sales at home grow about 4 percent each year, the industry’s problems overseas have brought an era of downsizing. The Winemakers’ Federation of Australia recently predicted that the industry would have to reduce the amount of wine it produced by as much as 20 percent to stay profitable, meaning many wineries would close or consolidate, vines would be ripped out and jobs would be lost.

“In the early long term, our vision for the Australian wine industry is a smaller industry at higher quality,” said Lawrie Stanford, the manager of information and analysis with Wine Australia, the government body that helps direct Australia’s overseas wine marketing. “We’ve done the volume growth, and we overdid it a bit  the industry is recognizing that. What we’re doing now is pulling back a bit.”

The biggest challenge there, according to the British wine writer Andrew Jefford, will be to convince consumers that Australia can offer more than just the “cheap and cheerful” wines they have grown accustomed to seeing.

That will require new efforts to educate consumers about Australian wine regions and a push by winemakers to accentuate those differences, Mr. Jefford said.

Wine Australia says it will shift the marketing focus away from what it calls “brand champions”  recognizable labels that sell at rock-bottom prices  toward smaller producers that highlight the differences among regions and varieties. The result, officials hope, will be fewer Australian bottles in the bargain bin and more labels pitched at the $20 price point.