Vintage 2024: Update from Adrian
Vintage 2024 was one of the most hectic and earliest vintages we have ever experienced in the Yarra Valley. I remember being told as a child, that an early Easter means an early harvest. Well, I can tell you that certainly held true this year.
This season like most, brought its challenges. A wet growing season most notably finished with the wettest January on record. From Feb onwards, the weather warmed up and dried up, inevitably giving us perfect harvest conditions.
While we knew that it was going to be an early vintage compared to recent years (due to how the vines were tracking) even we were surprised when the first fruit came into the winery on the 11th of February, which was coincidently the same date that we started in 2016.
From there we went straight into full throttle for three frantic weeks with fruit from the Yarra floor, the Upper Yarra Valley and Heathcote all being picked in this window. By the first week of March, we were pretty much done. In recent years we were only just beginning vintage in March.
There were a few other parcels of fruit that arrived after that initial onslaught, but from there on we were busy monitoring chardonnay fermentations, putting our pinot noir into oak post primary ferment and pressing off the other red ferments.
At the moment we are nursing the reds through malolactic fermentation and getting back into the non-vintage routine which consists of blending and stabilising wines in preparation for bottling, topping barrels, monitoring and analysing the wines during maturation, and of course cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning.
Quality this year looks great, there are some lovely aromatics, bold flavours and very good natural acidity in the final wines.
Excitingly this year we have a new parcel in the winery; Sangiovese from the Kennedy Vineyard in Heathcote, which will be destined for the Cosa Nostra range in 2025. This will be our first Sangiovese since 2015! Stay tuned. AS.
