WINE grape harvest in the Swan Valley has got off to one of the earliest starts on record.
January 2016
Vintage seemed to begin early this year, I think it was because we’d just got back from visiting family in the UK and a bit jet lagged started back at work.
Fortunately James had spent most of Christmas checking the irrigation (apologies to Carol, his wife) as we’d had a number of really warm days, monitoring and adjusting the irrigation, was critical.
The fruit was in good condition and though it felt like an early start to vintage, at Upper Reach it was only two days earlier than last year. Interestingly it seems that vintage is creeping earlier each year, over the last 20 years vintage has moved about three weeks earlier, it’s the same across all grape growing regions in Australia!
Swan Valley vineyards parched as we had our lowest winter rainfall in at least 15 years.
A hot and early start to spring also spurred the vines into early growth, allowing vineyards to thrive through the pre-summer months; the temperature in October was five degrees above average.
The first pick was Chardonnay for our Sparkling base on Monday 11 January, then we were into it, picking Chardonnay on Wednesday 13, and Verdelho on Friday 15 and Monday 18th.
We got 10mm of rain on Tuesday 19th, so we cancelled the next pick; so a surprise day off right in the thick of it. Derek was glad he’d done that, as two days later the Verdelho was perfect; perfect baume (an indicator of the sugar level) and perfect condition.
Derek is pretty happy with everything so far, the fruit all looks good, the berries seem smaller than usual which suggests that we’ll have really good, intense flavours. We struggle to predict anything useful this early in vintage, but its all looking good!
February 2016
We ended January with 15 mms of rain…on the afternoon of our first Twilight Concert (no I’m not bitter).
The next pick, due two days later was cancelled, as the sugar levels had been diluted by the rain, resulting in less busy days in the winery.
We monitor all the ferments, the aim is for them to reduce one sugar level and increase in one alcohol level per day – we control this by adjusting the temperature of the tanks- the lower the temperature, the slower the fermentation.
Once ferments are completed, the wine is racked off the yeast lees, these are the leftover solids from the ferment and Derek starts the fining up process.
An advantage of the slower progress of vintage is that Derek has had lots of time to think, plan and prepare, something that’s lucky as we now have a heatwave coming up; 5 days of 38+ weather!
We’ve been watering for a couple of days to help the vines through this, but as most of the red grapes are still on the vine, its not ideal
Some shiraz was picked before the heat and some just at the end of the heatwave, this wine is fermenting as I type- yields are down but it will be a big, rich, ripe one!
This warm weather will result in wines with very forward flavour with a lot more sweet and fruity characteristics, while cooler years produce wines that take longer to develop and less obvious fruit characteristics.