2009 Vintage Report

After the ups and downs of the last 4 years, it was good to have a more normal season, if such a thing exists anymore!

By normal I mean that there was no drought, we had good winter and spring rains and regular top ups through out the season. There was an unusual weather event in November, a cold snap, with snow, hail, wind and rain. This gave the vines a bit of frost burn from which they seemed to recover quite quickly. Initially we thought that there was minimal damage, but as the season progressed it was apparent that the yield was going to be down as the bunches were a lot smaller than usual and fewer in number.

This however is a mixed blessing as we often do shoot thinning, and bunch thinning to lower crop levels, especially in Pinot Noir.

The results have been interesting, the yields were about half our normal, but the quality was exceptional. Great fruit intensity with very high acid levels, the Sauvignon Blanc was picked at 13.2 beaume with a pH of 3.3 and a TA of 10, the Pinot Gris had 13.2 a pH of 3.23 and a TA of 9.9, some of the best figures ever achieved.

We have continued our approach with all fruit being hand picked and sorted, the whites continue to use free run juice only, with minimum intervention during wine making. There are a lot of claims about what wineries do, but the reality is high quality fruit makes good wine, (the wine is made in the vineyard) and with gentle processing should only require little more than fermenting and bottling.

The 2008 wines were released in May 2009 and are with out doubt the best to date, we expect the 2009 vintage to be equal if not better.