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 sprayers/tractors created numerous challenges. The other challenge due to the wet weather was mildew. We managed to spray copper and sulphur about every 10 days or so…..this fortunately kept the mildew under control.
Come early 2023 we were worried about how cool and wet the growing season had been to date. Then February came bringing much dryer and warmer conditions. Where we once worried we may not be able to ripen the fruit, we are now worried about how quickly everything is ripening. Not only that, there was fire! The Hill End fire brought some serious trepidation about potential smoke taint- we were very unsure of it’s trajectory and the implications for our harvest. Thankfully the RFS and the weather got on top of that blaze.
Our three vineyards (Bella Luna at O’Connell, Mount Panorama Estate and Winooka Park at Gemalla) all have good looking and fruit developing. This could be the first highly successful vintage of Bathurst/Oberon fruit in over four years….hoooooooray!!!!!! We have picked the Chardonnay from Mount Panorama Estate and from Bella Luna and it looks incredible.
Latest update its now 2 weeks later and the rains have come. Even though we are just over 1/3 of the way through vintage, we am still hopeful and quietly confident the rains will subside and the sun will come out long enough to ripen the remaining grapes on the vine (mostly reds). We need a couple of weeks of sunshine and minimal rain without any frosts. Shiraz from Mt Panorama should be due in within the next couple of weeks- we are off to the vineyards today to assess the ripeness. So watch this space, next you here from us we might report that things came good for an absolutely glorious harvest or that it didn’t quite warm up / dry off enough for us to get our reds ripe. The joys of grape growing!
