The winegrape harvest has, as always, been hectic.
Following this, our last full-on week, we hope to catch our breath a bit and work through our last few varieties and the last blocks of contract harvesting during the next few weeks, and at a much more reasonable pace.
We will be sending our fruit to five wineries this season, and with the big wineries that fruit may equate to only six drops or so in the bottle of a large product.
But at the other end of the scale, when you have products which contain most, or all our fruit, well it is then very heartening to follow the progress of the product.
I can report that I have been very happy with the harvest and hope to get to the very necessary job of feeding the vines with fertiliser through the irrigation system soon.
If I don’t get onto it soon, they might start thinking independent thoughts, such as they might just be having a year off next year.
I have also really enjoyed picking a couple of patches into bins – instead of harvesting them to the ground, which is what occurred last year.
The industry is still in a mess with an abundant oversupply, no question about that, and we will not be seeing a more balanced position until more vines are removed to better reflect the new markets for wine which are now emerging.
But this won’t be any kind of a quick fix for our industry.
Since it’s nearly golf season at Royal Lakeside, it reminded me to check in on a couple of snails which had been left standing guard on a supposed UFO, with Rocket and number 5 printed on it.
And yes, the two snails two years later were still waiting for the UFO residents to emerge from the white dimpled spacecraft.
You have to admire perseverance.
And please, always talk to your mates.
