With vintage well and truly in the rear vision mirror and a month of pruning behind us, this harvest update is long overdue! Truth be told, this year's vintage was a 'challenging' one as we like to say in the wine business and I felt a bit deflated afterwards rather than pumped. That's no reflection on the quality of the wines, which look bright and energetic, but with crop levels being down after a difficult growing season we are all looking forward to hopefully drier and sunnier spring weather and better flowering conditions later this year. We weren't alone in this regard of course and as is always the case many winemakers and grape growers in other regions had more far bigger challenges than us. Anyway, onwards to 2024! (That's farming optimism for you).
All of this is to say that when the 2023s are released in early September you should grab them while you can as I can't imagine they will hang around for long. Riesling was a variety particularly badly hit with the wet and overcast weather that we had in November and December (I can't remember seeing so much 'millerandage' or 'hen and chicken' in Riesling before) so there will definitely be a little less of that available, and likewise there will be less Rada this year...maybe grab some of the 2022s while there are still some left? The good news is that there will be a little bit more Tupelo this year and I have a new wine joining the line-up.
In other post-vintage news, apart from pruning, we seem to have been pretty busy. I've already had some mainland jaunts to Sydney, Canberra (for the National Wine Show) and Adelaide and Bryn has just got back from a week in Marlborough for the Organic and Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference. He's come back full of ideas which thankfully involve more chickens, bees and native shelterbelts rather then big (expensive!) pieces of machinery.
I also managed to squeeze in one of the final lunches at Fat Pig Farm thanks to the generosity of Matthew and Sadie. It was a 'full circle' kind of event as I was also at one of their first lunches back in 2016. In the meantime, as some of you may know, Stargazer made a series of vintages of 'keg wine' for the restaurant and I was delighted to be included in their menus over the years, and now to also be able to call them friends. I hope that they well and truly enjoy the break, but I'm looking forward to seeing what they do next in their beautiful little piece of the world.
