What a stellar harvest!

Winter was very kind to us for the first time in 3 years. In fact, it was our wettest since 2006. Although in the last week of October some of the darkest clouds I’ve ever seen delivered one almighty hailstorm which affected about half our growers including our home vineyards. The damage ranged from total wipe-out for one of our Eden Valley Growers to 4 or 5% loss respectively.

Bud burst was strong due to the excellent 21 winter’s rain but unfortunately we took another hit a little later with windy conditions proving costly for the fruit set timing. This caused another incredibly low crop for our Tempranillo vineyard.

From this point on, although the threat of La Nina was scary it did not take effect and we had our usual dry summer with a welcome rain event in late February. This freshened things up delivering a stunning vintage. It was cool and slow meaning I could pick exactly when it suited and there were no days over 40 degrees and with coolish nights we were blessed with flavour, structure and natural acidity.

Varieties which were exceptional from V22 were Riesling, Cabernet Franc, Grenache & Shiraz.

Plus a special mention needs to made of Cabernet Sauvignon as this will truly become a collector’s vintage as there are strong comparisons to 2002 & 2012.

Ben Chipman