March 2006
Vintage 2006 is shaping up to be very promising. Like most of south eastern Australia, we will be early, perhaps two weeks. Usually with early years, with reduced hang time, flavour development lags the sugars and there can be a risk of high sugars, hence high alcohol levels. So we are surprised at the early flavour development, which augers well for harvesting the fruit at moderate sugar levels (hence moderate alcohol level).
December 2005
Vintage 2005 was a great vintage – quality and yields right on target. The Chardonnay is possibly the best we have done, the Pinot Noir is up there too, but it will be hard to beat the 2004 – and the Pinot Gris, our second vintage for this interesting variety, was also a standout.To Robert and his Vineyard Team, many thanks for a great effort. To Mother Nature, thank you for the surprisingly calm warm autumn with perfect ripening conditions. The 2005 Chardonnay will be bottled next month. We are delighted to be bottling a small quantity of 2005 “Lacuna” (unwooded) Chardonnay; you may recall our only other unwooded chardonnay, being from the 2000 vintage. The 2005 Pinot Noir is a big structured wine that will need another twelve months in oak to harness the multi-layered elements.
March 2004
With veraison happening at an exponential rate, we are launched into the serious end of the vintage cycle.
All the indicators are in the ‘very positive’ range – BUT we still have somewhere between six and eight weeks to go before harvest, so we won’t get too optimistic in the predictions.
The variability of temperatures and sunshine hours provides a reality check when we start feeling too optimistic. On Saturday (March 6th) the maximum temperature was 35 oC but on the following day the maximum temperature was only 12 oC.
Looking at the vineyard today, we can report the following:
The fruit load is well balanced to the size and condition of the canopy
The canopy developed to a good size with longer shoots than the past few vintages – it is first time that we have used the hedger bars that were purchased back in 2002. Each shoot is approximately 1.2 metres long with 14 plus working leaves.
Essentially it is a drought year again – the rains of December were too short and sharp and the water rain off to the creeks and dams, rather that infiltrating the soil. Since December there has been very little rain – we only got 25 mm in January and 6 mm in February. It has been necessary to irrigate but not to any great degree because the evaporation rates have been unseasonly low. There is no vine stress apparent at this stage except for the lower rows in the 1995 Pinot that is on rocky soils – this block is always the first to show stress – but even here there are enough working leaves to ripen the crop, provided we get average conditions for the next two months.
At first I was concerned with the variability of veraison but that changed quite quickly – however, the frosted areas remain a little behind and we will harvest those blocks in two lots. At the beginning of the season, straight after the frosts hit, we went through the vineyard with spray cans marking the posts so we would be able to separate the frost affected areas.
In summary – as of early March, the prospects for Vintage 2004 are very promising.
November 2003
Here in mid November, it is a far too early to make any meaningful projections of the quality of the coming 2004 vintage – however, due to the frost impact, we do know that quantity will be down, even if flowering, fruit set and all the other physiological and climatic variables fall in our favour. As to how far it will be down, we will be in a better position in a month or so, when then we can see the degree of fruitfulness of the new shoots.
What we can say about the prospects of growth in the vineyard is that the moisture level of the soil, at the beginning of the growth cycle, is the best it has been for several years..
In regard to the 2003 wines, we can report they are progressing very well and may even be a step up on the 2002 wines – this augers well for future vintages as the vines age. However, like the 2002 vintage, exceptionally low yields due to the drought conditions and the related losses to birds, supply will be limited – more so in the Chardonnay, where production was only 300 dozen, compared to the anticipated 900 dozen. Rest assured that Friends of Curly Flat will get a pro-rata allocation of the variety/varieties that they have previously purchased.
