We haven’t received a specific question regarding this year’s harvest but I know you were all dying to ask “How was vintage 2011 ?”
So granddaughter Hayley asked Tim Collard from our winemaking team, on your behalf.

The Vintage of 2011 has been a challenging and testing time where vigilance and patience have paid off under difficult climatic conditions.
It has been back to basics, but the upside of tough times is that we’ve learnt a lot which will stand us in good stead for the future.

Good rains through Spring positioned the vineyard very nicely indeed for the growing season to come. The rains however continued to come in Summer and humid conditions persisted creating major headaches, making it difficult to control and prevent the spread of diseases such as downy mildew and botrytis.
Our vineyard staff worked vigilantly and hard to contain these hot spots, lift and trim vine canopies and apply extra sprays to protect the fruit before harvest.

Picking started with our Whites in early March – almost three weeks later than for the previous decade – and proceeded steadily with good flavour and acid balance being achieved.
Our Reds continued this trend with many being picked at 12.5 Baume (the measure of sugar in the grapes which roughly converts to the alcohol level in the wine), a change from the average of 13.5 Baume of past vintages.

It certainly wasn’t a year to be waiting around, with only moderate summer temperatures, frequent rain and high disease pressure the decision to pick potentially meant the difference between sound good quality fruit or loss and threat of irreversible damage.

Fortunately our decision making was sound and the fruit harvested has been in good condition with few disease problems and we have fared much better than other regions.

The vineyard and winery staff certainly breathed a sigh of relief when the last trailer of fruit came in and hope not to see another season like this for some time to come!

Cheers,
Tim Collard