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 below the average of about 650 mL per year in the O’Connell region. This, coupled with the low amount of winter rain in 2018, meant we had little to no moisture in the ground last spring. I learned a major lesson last year and that is the importance of late winter supplemental irrigation in dry years.
Unfortunately, the groundwork was already laid for the vines to not push themselves at all. So, they aborted quite a bit of fruit. We then had some beautiful rains in November, December and January but it was too late for our vines.
Many people say, and they are right to a degree, that some of the best wines are made from years where the grapes must suffer and fight to survive. There is no doubt that smaller berries lead to more concentrated flavours and you get smaller berries when the vines have limited access to water. However, there is also a point where the grapes have to fight too much to survive and the smaller production may not improve the quality of the grapes and the viability of the vineyard becomes a problem.
This year we harvested a total of just over 11 tonnes of fruit from our two vineyards (Bella Luna and Mount Panorama Estate) plus 5.3 tonnes of fruit from various other local growers in Orange and Bathurst. This total of just over 16 tonnes is well down on the last two years where we had processed between 20-25 tonnes.
The small harvest may have been a godsend though, as mentioned earlier, we also made the big move to make our wines at our home property leaving our beloved friends at Vale Creek (Tony and Liz).
We had been winemaking at Vale Creek for the past seven years and enjoyed every bit of it. Looking forward we decided it was time to take the big plunge and see if we can float (I’m pretty good with the clichés, aren’t I?). Our initial idea was for the planned new building at O’Connell to be a cellar door and finished wine storage area for at least the next year or two. However, at the eleventh hour and before much building had taken place, we decided we could manage this year’s vintage in the current house shed space that we had at home. After a frantic couple of weeks of removing accumulated junk and a thorough cleaning we received and processed the first picking of chardonnay grapes. We muddled through the whole fiver week vintage, got the forklift bogged in our dirt yard, created novel ways of cooling down the ferments without a proper cool room, and were feeling pleased at being able to manage our way through without the conveniences of a proper winery space. Looking back, we have really enjoyed this whole new and memorable experience and are excited for you to come and see what we are up to here. The new winery is up and will be ready for a much more civilized vintage in 2020.
