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I was in the Hunter over the weekend and had the opportunity to speak to a few growers and winemakers. Those that picked their red before the rain mid Feb are extremely pleased with their crop. Could possibly be one of the best vintages for some time.

Redback wrote:I was in the Hunter over the weekend and had the opportunity to speak to a few growers and winemakers. Those that picked their red before the rain mid Feb are extremely pleased with their crop. Could possibly be one of the best vintages for some time.

New to wine?

Panda 9D wrote:

Redback wrote:I was in the Hunter over the weekend and had the opportunity to speak to a few growers and winemakers. Those that picked their red before the rain mid Feb are extremely pleased with their crop. Could possibly be one of the best vintages for some time.

New to wine?

Hi Panda9D,

I have been a long time consumer , but the bug really hit about 10 years ago, when I drank my first truly aged wine. Ever since then, it has become somewhat of a passion. Only discovered this forum recently and I look forward to learning more and making the odd contribution. Cheers

Redback wrote:I have been a long time consumer , but the bug really hit about 10 years ago, when I drank my first truly aged wine. Ever since then, it has become somewhat of a passion. Only discovered this forum recently and I look forward to learning more and making the odd contribution. Cheers

Welcome Redback!!

You have to have a thick skin round here. A few board members are (over?) suspicious of people whose first posts are positive opinions about things, particularly a specific wine (not in your case).

Hope to hear more of your impressions (positive or negative) of wines, regions and vintages. Denigrate the wine scribes/judges/juggernauts and you will be accepted as kith and kin immediately!

Cheers

Michael

FWIW, the wineries I know up there has pretty much harvested everything before the rain, and they're pretty happy with the fruit that came in.

Michael McNally wrote:

Redback wrote:I have been a long time consumer , but the bug really hit about 10 years ago, when I drank my first truly aged wine. Ever since then, it has become somewhat of a passion. Only discovered this forum recently and I look forward to learning more and making the odd contribution. Cheers

Welcome Redback!!

You have to have a thick skin round here. A few board members are (over?) suspicious of people whose first posts are positive opinions about things, particularly a specific wine (not in your case).

Hope to hear more of your impressions (positive or negative) of wines, regions and vintages. Denigrate the wine scribes/judges/juggernauts and you will be accepted as kith and kin immediately!

Cheers

Michael

Oh waaaahhh. I was just referring to the yearly ritual of wineries claiming the vintage to be one of the best ever (best cab vintage, best grenache vintage etc. most balanced vintage). Could be true in this case but...

Long time lurker (but did contribute a while back, but forgot my details etc).

Anyway to be totally transparent, I do have some involvement with a vineyard in the Hunter (not surprising given my handle) !

2014 is looking extremely promising for both reds and whites, which I can honesty report has not been the case over the past few years.

2013, was a fabulous vintage for Semillon, and for those that got their chardonnay fruit off and at the right baume’ levels, they will produce some good wines. However I would caution on the quality of the red wine vintage (ours are so/so) . Whilst there will invariably be some good wine produced from some micro-climates, we got a huge amount of water from late January thru February, which for those that know, this is the time that we harvest the reds (pinot excluded)!

2012, the summer that never was (very similar to the disaster of 2008). However again some decent whites, but beware of the reds !

2011, a really good year for reds, unlike other regions (WA excluded). Whites ok

So back to 2014. We didn’t cop the heatwaves that the southern states did. In fact it was a reasonably (for the Hunter !!) mild summer, with only about 2 days 40+, but very dry. Very little rain, but ground tables are still ok. Rain has only really commenced as others have indicated since the vast majority of the reds are already off (we picked the last of our shiraz 2.5 weeks ago). Interestingly, some of the shiraz we normally let drop (we just don’t need it for our label and others haven’t needed it), was sold this year, which indicates to me, that perhaps there is likely a shortfall in other sources of fruit ? Just hope the winemaker does his job, as we got the fruit right !

2014 may be the best year ever (yes I am channeling Murray Tyrrell)…. just joking Panda, but lets wait and see, as I think it may well be pretty good ?

Cheers The Hunter

If I ever have my own winery I will have a board out the front which says "Our ...... Vintage is the finest ever!" and will fill the blank with one of those rotating boards like they used to have on old score boards... or maybe just a white board with texta haha

Vintage is well under way in Clare - a couple of recent tweets:

https://twitter.com/GrossetWines

@GrossetWines 17 Feb wrote:"Riesling harvest kicks off @Springvale. Beautiful day, lovely fruit (fresh mineral lime flavours), healthy vineyard"

https://twitter.com/KTWinesbyKT

Kerri Thompson @KTWinesbyKT 24 Feb wrote:"I love #riesling so much i'm going to put it in my shiraz.."#churingavineyard #coferment #summerofriesraz

Tyrrell's view of the 2014 vintage from their newsletter:

This vintage was the result of a long, dry winter and summer. We received 25mm of rain from the beginning of June to the beginning of September, followed by 150mm in November (none of which ran off) and about 12mm during vintage itself - a big difference from 300mm during vintage last year and the year before. The dry conditions brought about an early start to harvest and just like in 2013 we had pretty much picked all the chardonnay before we started the semillon.

This will be a great year for Chardonnay; lots of flavour, good acid and robust structures. Semillon was the most difficult to handle this year as the sugars were rising quickly and the flavours were not following. It required a great deal of patience to wait until the Semillons were flavour ripe as well as sugar ripe, and often the window of opportunity to pick was only a day or two, so we had to monitor things carefully. In the end though, I am very pleased with the overall quality of all of this year’s whites and as always, the great vineyards shine through. The semillons will be very good drinking as young wines but the best of them will have plenty of acid and structure for a long life.

On the red side of things, our Hunter shiraz is looking fantastic – reminiscent of years like 1973 and 1985, or even the great 1965 vintage. Higher alcohols, but intense colours and good flavour at this stage. Watch this space for a great shiraz vintage. The pinot noir, which was all picked in January, is now in oak and is definitely the best we have made since 2009, so it’s looking like we’ll have a Vat 6 this year.

Heathcote has had temperatures of over 40ºc almost every day this year. Thankfully, we built an extra storage dam about four years ago on the property and so have had enough water to keep the vines alive and healthy. A number of our neighbours who lack irrigation have no leaves or fruit left on their vines, so we are very thankful. We should start picking there later this week

Philip White's latest vintage update: http://drinkster.blogspot.com/2014/03/v ... etter.html

Spoke to a few makers/growers up in the Clare Valley.
2013/2014 was chalk and cheese on some of the responses I got.
At some CD's it was a semi disaster with huge amounts of damage done by hail, crazy heat and unwanted rain.
Other CD's would shrug the shoulders and tell me it wasn't really bad at all and they
were extremely happy with the yield and quality.
There seemed to be a 'bugbear' year/vintage for all different reasons for varying wineries when I really got into it.
Just interesting to ask the question over a tasting and see what the general consensus was across the board.

Some recent difficulties in the southern NSW tablelands...

Fungus ruins red wine grape crops in NSW
by Lucy Barber
ABC Rural
2 April 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-02/b ... ps/5360918

Recent rain on the southern tablelands of NSW has led to outbreaks of botrytis in some vineyards, ruining up to half of some red wine grape crops.

Botrytis is a fungus which grows on the outside of berries and can change the flavour and colour of the fruit.

It comes after frost last year wiped out entire crops in the region.

Vigneron Howard Spark, from Goulburn, says his shiraz grapes have been badly affected.

"If we don't get in and get it off now, the botrytis will just run away and we won't get any crop at all," he said.

"We've probably dropped about half on the ground. We've probably lost half with the frost and now half with the rain."

From hunter mount pleasant.

http://www.mountpleasantwines.com.au/bl ... tage-2014/

Philip White's final wrap up of the 2014 vintage conditions in South Australia. It will only be a few months until the first rieslings should be starting to appear.

VINTAGE 2014 ONE OF EXTREMES
Philip White
drinkster.com
9th May 2014

http://drinkster.blogspot.com/2014/05/v ... remes.html

Following the success of previous vintages for Mornington Pinot (both '12 and '13 are looking strong) 2014 was something...well, different. Wind and rain during flowering has resulted in very small yields...I'm not sure what the average will be, but I'd guess maybe just 25% of the 2013 level. Quality however looks good.

I understand other areas in Victoria suffered from similar issues, but maybe not to the same extent. I'd be interested to hear...

Simon

A few other non-barossan 2014 reports.

Brokenwood
http://www.brokenwood.com.au/Footer-Lin ... ge-Report/

McWilliams
http://www.mcwilliams.com.au/blog/2014- ... w-regions/

Margaret River Wine Association
http://margaretriverwine.info/wp-conten ... h-2014.pdf

Evans & Tate
http://www.evansandtate.com.au/blog/201 ... ge-report/

Coonawarra Vignerons
http://www.coonawarra.org/2014-2000-vin ... rts/?id=17

Brand's Laira
http://www.brandslaira.com.au/blog/2014 ... ge-report/