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2007 Vintage Report
Our 2007 vintage was dominated by the worst drought in a hundred years. Our challenge was how we handled these adverse conditions in our vineyard. We could do very little except try to give our vines enough of our meagre water allocation to keep them functioning. The vines did the rest on their own, luckily, all of the years of minimum irrigation has given them an extensive root system enabling them to source moisture deep in the soil and in the mid row.
This year the soil was already dry one metre down at the beginning of the season so the vines made their own decisions on how much fruit they thought they could ripen in the season. The crop was minute, an average of less than one tonne per acre over the whole of the vineyard. Our three acres of Cabernet Franc produced around 2 tonne which cost more to pick than the grapes were worth commercially. We decided to pick because we know how important the variety is to our blend and we made the right decision because the wine is incredibly intense.
Every week we picked we were unable to fill our fermenters which made an easier than normal vintage for Mike, Keith and Simona our vintage guest from Switzerland. Even though we are down on volume I am very happy with the quality so far. Our top Shiraz, which I racked for the first time in early May, has great flavour although I have heard that other winemakers are not so pleased. I think a lot of producers were a little too anxious to pick when the sugar level was right rather than when the grapes tasted right. Analytically the grapes were ready four weeks before our average harvest date but we ended up picking them several weeks later than this when the tannins were not so aggressive and the flavour was much deeper.
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