2024 was a phenomenal year for grapes in the Central Ranges of New South Wales……but it didn’t start out that way! We had virtually no water in the soil in early spring and had used up all of our available water including what little we had in our dam. Then, thankfully, the rains came in…
Another year in the life of a vigneron, ha ha, who knows what may happen next. The growing season started in September 2022 with plenty of water in the soil to set the grapes up for a good beginning. However, a wet October and November meant that the ground was so wet that waterlogging and bogged…
The best way to describe the 2019 vintage is, very small, with some good quality fruit. I believe that the main cause for the small crop was low rainfall. First, both 2017 and 2018 were extremely dry years in the O’Connell area with 408 ml of rain in 2017 and 451.5ml of rain in 2018. This is well…
The start to the vintage 2018 growing season was just the opposite to the year before, dry, dry, dry. We had virtually no moisture in the soil at the beginning of spring and this is still the case at the end of April. The summer storms were hit and miss which meant our vineyard at…