Tim's Ravings

My predecessor Bob Roberts once told me that he has never seen two vintages even vaguely the same. 

We were talking not just about the actual weather conditions but also the tastes of the wine. From my limited perspective in Mudgee, he is dead right. The red wine vintages from 1997 to 2007 were, respectively; elegant, thumping, fine, best forgot, dry reddy, bold,clunky, medium-bodied, average, ripe and boofy.

Which brings us to 2008. For the southern grapegrowing regions of Australia it was dominated by drought, leading to very few good wines, by all reports, thanks to dramatic and unavoidable over-ripening. Nothing could be further form reality in Mudgee.

A really unusual flow of rains from easterly off-shore events near Newcastle fed unlimited rains to the Hunter Valley and Mudgee, without going much further south.

Every three weeks from October to March the heaven gave us 50 millimetres of rain. Plus, it was colsd. Our hottest day for the season was in early October. There was only a handful of days in February (normally our hottest month) when the temperature rose above30 degrees Celsius. Disease was impossible to avoid. Downy and Powdery mildews crept through the vineyards during summer. By March the dreadful botrytis was endemic and unstoppable.

Yet somehow the grapegrowers of the district kept much of these diseases at bay. A textbook would say we should have been wiped out. Perhaps the weather-beaten growers were motivated by anger that floods would prove to the aftermath of drought. Instead of running aound endlessly turning on irrigation systems 12 months prior, this season these hardworking vignerons were constantly on tractors with spray carts.

In the end we produced wine, a minor miracle and ripe at that. Good flavours too, some are great. Perhaps we should simply tag 2008 vintage as 'miraculous'.

Let's hope that Bob's words continue to be true - my heart could not stand another vintage like 08.