Hare's Chase Vintage Report - 9/3/2010

As I write this we have just experienced several days of rain showers in the Barossa Valley. Fortunately we only received 8mm which will not trouble the remaining Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon that is still on the vines at Hare's Chase.

It has to this stage been a pretty good season. We had an almost average winter rainfall, a rarity during our time in the Barossa and this gave the vines an excellent start. The vines produced some good leaf coverage and were in very good condition when the heat wave struck in November. No one can ever remember a heat wave so early, it happened around flowering and we were all a bit worried about the effects of this unusual event. Happily it didn't produce any damage although we did hear of reports from other vineyards that there had been large losses in Grenache and Cabernet.

Since then the growing season has been trouble free and we have been very pleased with the quality of the grapes that we have harvested so far. We picked the Tempranillo on the 14th of February and it tasted really good on the vine, full of the dark cherry fruit flavours that I look for. I checked the wine in the barrel yesterday and it has retained all of the characters I admired on the vine plus it has a beautiful vibrant colour. The colours in the Shiraz have been as dark and deep as I have seen them at Hare's Chase, it looks like it is going to be an outstanding year for us.