vintage

The annual cycle of a winemaker is certainly a curious one. There's no denying though, that vintage is one of the most exciting times of the year. Organisation of machinery, pickers, transport, staff, barrels, storage, tanks, meals, sleep is key but nothing comes close to the final hours of checking Baumé levels and waiting for the final breath from Mother Nature signalling removal of the wonderful juicy fruit from the vines, often under the cover of darkness. There are those who irrigate and those who don't; those who spray and those who won't, old oak, new oak, French oak, American oak, timing and terroir - and for all of these exciting reasons, each glorious bottle of wine you encounter is different to the one even 100 metres down the road. Where years ago growers would leave the grapes on the vines as long as possible as to yield maximum alcohol and natural sugars from our Australian sun, winemakers are leaning towards fresher, more aromatic blends meaning grapes are lifted

2017 will be known as a very late vintage with an unusually long growing season delaying vintage by nearly a month. In the southern Adelaide Hills, many of us who had staved off disease and kept our canopies healthy chewed nervously on our fruit and glanced hopefully at our weekly analysis with itchy trigger fingers poised to get bird nets off and rip into harvest. A burst of warm weather in early April provided great relief to us and our neighbours as beaumes (sugars) strolled into the low to mid- teens. One last visit to our winemaker Phil Christiansen con rmed what we all suspected, a perfect balance of sugars and acids, fruit poised to make wine with amazing flavour without the usual belting of alcohol we’ve all become accustomed to... time to pick. Enter the weather. With ‘substantial’