This was the most challanging vintage ever, the saving grace was the extreamly wet winter and mild spring we had, but then the weather warmed up about the same time as Christmas and we had the most days in a row above 40 degrees ever.
It was also the time when Covid actually hit WA, so people were getting Covid and having to isolate. Australia & WA’s boarders were still closed so no one could get in or out of the state. This created a shortage of pickers, in fact we’ve been using the same picking team for the last 10 or so years, they all live locally, but unfortuatly thy had a car accident when going to another job so the whole team were out of action for most of the picking season.
It was a real challange to harvest the fruit, when had friends, neighbours, relations and yes even customers coming out to help- it was literally all hands on deck.
Each day we could only pick about half of what we’d usually pick.
The icing on the top was a number of electricity blackouts…caused by the unually hot conditions- but a complete nightmare when you’re in the middle of vintage and trying to control temperatures on all the different wines.
In fact, the wines look excellent considering the season’s challenges.