Wine lovers are in for a treat as local grape growers harvest a crop that is the “best in many years”, though there will be less wine bottled from a smaller crop.
Chris Seifried is a winemaker at Seifried Family Winemakers, and he says this year’s crop is the best he has seen since the 2019 drought due to the run of dry weather through the critical harvest period.
“The weather has been great right through, so it means we’ve got quite light crops but really concentrated and quite clean – no mould or mildew. It’s beautiful fruit which results in more distinctive varietal wines.
“The 2019 harvest was a stunning season and this is getting close to that. Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay are looking fantastic – they’re the two I’m most excited about.”
Harvest will continue until mid-April, though the dry weather ripens fruit rapidly and puts pressure on machine harvesting, with two machines operating 12 to 14-hours a day.
“Everything is ripening quite rapidly and the harvest window is shrinking because the fruit is at its optimum. But we’re very excited and just hope the weather stays like this until the end of harvest.”
One of the challenges this harvest is protecting the crop from birds which have been more determined than ever to get a share of the fruit.
“There’s less food around in the dry for birds so we literally don’t take the netting off until the day before we harvest or on the day we are harvesting.”
While little moisture results in more intense flavour in the fruit, it does mean less quantity and Chris says the Brightwater block also suffered from frost at bud burst in October which destroyed about 40 per cent of potential fruit on that site.
A smaller vintage does not necessarily mean higher prices for a bottle of wine though.
“It does have some influence on prices, but I don’t think it will on the domestic market. Competition in the wine industry means you’re compelled to hold prices as best you can. It is a real juggle with increasing costs and not being able to pass that on. But there’s just so much wine around.”
This year the vineyard and winery has six young winemakers from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France who join a team of permanent staff on the vineyard and in the winery. The Covid-19 pandemic put a pause on young winemakers travelling the globe for work, but Chris says seasonal workers from overseas are back in numbers.
“There are more people travelling and there’s almost a pent-up demand from young winemakers to travel. Most of them come from vineyards or wineries and we get to hear what they’re doing as well, so there’s a great transfer of knowledge.”
