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Lack of clouds has a silver lining

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Created on Tuesday, 30 January 2007 14:30

Ask any winemaker about the "glut" of Australian wine, and you will hear many different opinions, here's ours!

Our team has watched the wine surplus build up over the past few vintages thanks, primarily, to a string of excellent growing seasons that delivered us more grapes than we needed. However, our winemaking team believes there are a number of factors that are fast depleting supplies.

Frost. Early in the 2007 vintage, many of our prime growing areas were struck by very severe frost. This cost many tonnes of grapes.

Drought. Australia, especially South Australia, has been experience one of its worst droughts on record, leading to stringent restrictions in water allowance for grape growers and residents alike, This has led to lower yields being forecast. While a diminished River Murray has hurt heavily irrigated regions such as the Riverland, the lack of rain has hit those regions that produce "dry grown" crops.

Tornado. In scenes from a down under version of the Wizard of Oz, the Riverland region, pictured above, was struck by an unusually fierce tornado, which flattened many vines completely, wreaking havoc and slashing crop forecasts.

Heat. Our summer is delivering is harsh sting of hot weather and, given the preceding conditions, many vines are shutting down and being harvested much earlier than expected. We hear that due to this combination of factors - lower yield, difficult growing conditions - the fruit that is being harvested is much more intense in flavour than usual.

Popularity. The final factor eating into wine stocks is the growing popularity of Australian wine overseas. We are working at top pace just to keep up with demand. Little wonder then that with increasing sales and the difficult growing conditions, supply and demand will be much more evenly balanced this vintage.