Wine notes with

Challenging vintages

Clive Hartley

With the 2023 vintage now put to bed Oliver Rapson from Lyons Will Estate had time to summarise the year. “In a nutshell, the start of this year was exceedingly wet, delaying budburst substantially, which in turn had a knock-on effect across every stage of the vine development, including flowering, veraison and ultimately ripening.”

Early autumn is a critical time for final ripening, and in Daylesford it felt that we switched from summer to winter on the first day, I recall. So that put the vintage back as much as three weeks behind the normal dates.

Macedon Ranges is already one of the last regions to pick grapes in Australia, so this delayed harvest didn’t help ripening for some varieties. A late harvest also means that the temperatures in the winery are lower, and this can affect the fermenting must. Temperatures hovering around or below 15°C means the fermentation takes longer to finish. It also means the grapes will have lower sugar content and therefore have resulting low alcohol. It has been a run of three difficult vintages. 2022 was also a damp vintage as was 2021, being described as “a little bit on the cool side”. You have to go back to 2019 to find a normal warmer vintage.

This is the third year of the La Niña cycle where conditions in the Pacific Ocean bring wetter conditions to northern and south-eastern Australia, resulting in lower-than-normal temperatures. Whilst the full effects are felt in Queensland and NSW it does seem to reach as far south as the Highlands of Victoria. It is likely that the cycle has come to an end with some international agencies reporting that El Niño cycle has commenced, although our own, and highly respected, Bureau of Meteorology is being more cautious about declaring a change.

The drier conditions from El Niño bring their own threats and we only have to recall the terrible bush fires in 2020 that resulted in roughly half of NSW wine regions being affected by smoke taint and unable to make wine.

Clive Hartley is an award-winning wine writer, educator and consultant. His Australian Wine Guide (7th ed) is available for purchase from Paradise Books in Daylesford or via his website – www.australianwineguide.com.au You can contact Clive on info@australianwineguide.com.au

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