WINE produced in Sunraysia this vintage is likely to be high quality despite an “extremely challenging” year for both growers and makers, industry leaders say.
Australian Grape & Wine said over the past year, growers in several regions across Australia had faced wet weather and significant flooding that created “serious and widespread” disease pressures.
“While dealing with disease pressure is part of growing grapes, the wet weather made it difficult and at times impossible to get machinery into vineyards, leading to high rates of disease across vast areas, significantly reducing tonnages,” it said.
“Many growers lost large portions or their entire crop of grapes, but many of those that were able to overcome the challenges are likely to be rewarded with high quality fruit.”
This was the case for Australian Vintage’s Buronga Hill Winery, as chief winemaker Jamie Saint said it was expecting to produce high-quality wine this harvest.
“We were able to manage this and have come out the other side harnessing the milder and longer ripening conditions to the advantage of high-quality grapes, and therefore wine,” he said.
“We’re very impressed at this early stage with the quality of fruit coming out.”
Vintage at the winery had a delayed start, beginning in the second week of February and likely finishing later this month.
Australian Grape & Wine said that while Australia was an incredibly diverse winemaking continent, one consistent theme across most regions was the “very late vintage” that was benefiting some winemakers.
“The positive of a longer ripening period is that it can produce wine grapes of incredible quality,” it said.
“The risks, however, is that the longer the grapes sit on the vine, the more risk there is associated with weather conditions and pests like birds.
“Overall, we’re expecting a vintage that is very good in terms of quality, but well down in terms of quantity.”
Mr Saint said it was too early to tell how the size of the winery’s vintage compared to previous years, but stated the winery was targeting roughly the same as prior seasons.
“We’re expecting the yield on our owned and leased vineyards to be approximately 5 per cent down to due to flooding,” he said.
At its peak, the winery intakes about 2500 to 3000 tonnes of grapes in a day, which equates to 55 to 66 trucks a day.
It is targeting five to six per cent of the country’s total crush.
Mr Saint said the grapes come from 12 regions, from the Hunter Valley to Adelaide Hills and inbetween.
He said about 57 per cent of the grapes come from the greater Sunraysia region.
Harvested from the winery are 30 different varieties which come from across 12 different regions.
By volume shiraz, cabernet and chardonnay are the largest varietal intakes.
The winery has also added varietals dolcetto, inzolia and gamay to its portfolio this year.
