Vintage 2026 has definitely been one to remember! Quite a number of factors were at play, and it made for an unusual season.

- Cool, dry Spring. This led to a slightly later budburst and very small berry size. (there was also a freak frost in mid November which fortunately didn't cause us any damage as our site is quite good for frost.)

- Heatwave in January. We escaped any smoke damage from the associated bushfires in other areas of Victoria, but the heat shriveled up some of our very small grapes, particularly Durif.

- Big dumps of rain in late Feb & March (total 175mm in 4 dumps). Anything that we hadn't already picked slowed right down with all this sudden water. We only picked 2 days in the whole of March, and finally finished in early April.

Most of our wines ended up looking very good, but there is just not much of them!

The next step is to get the reds into barrel which is running a bit behind our usual schedule due to the later end of vintage. The start of pruning will be delayed too because there are still green leaves on the vines. Anyone with a garden knows how confused plants have been this Autumn, and the vines are no different! But once we get a good frost they'll go into dormancy, and the cycle starts again.